Denver didn’t buy a future this summer. They rented a present.
The Nuggets had a 23-year-old wing coming off the best season of his career, and they let him walk, holding on to a piece of paper that comes due in 2031. In his place they signed a 37-year-old All-Star on a one-year deal at the salary of a roster filler.
Like every good NBA story, this one has two readings. The second is far more interesting than the first.
What actually happened
On August 19, after three months of leaks, ultimatums and figures that travelled from $70 million to $112 million, Peyton Watson landed in Cleveland through a sign-and-trade. He signed a four-year, $88 million contract that includes a player option and a 7.5% trade kicker. Denver received Cleveland’s unprotected 2031 first-round pick, a 2032 Kings second-rounder and Julian Reese from Washington — a player the Nuggets intend to waive off his two-way deal, so let’s not even count him.
Two days later, on August 21, DeMar DeRozan agreed to a one-year, $3.9 million deal with Denver. The veteran minimum. The kind of money a roster’s last man earns, not a six-time All-Star.
So the real equation is not “Watson versus DeRozan.” It is this one:
Watson at $22 million a year versus DeRozan at $3.9 million, plus an unprotected 2031 first-rounder, plus a 2032 second.
Put that way, the decision stops being absurd. It becomes a bet.
The player who left
Watson was not a rotation extra. Last season, in the 54 games he managed, he averaged 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 1.1 blocks and 0.9 steals in 29.6 minutes, shooting 49.6% from the field and 41.1% from three. From the corners he hit 52%, which placed him in the 97th percentile league-wide. And he did all of it while drawing the opposing team’s best scorer every night.
A 6-foot-8 wing who defends like that and shoots like that isn’t sitting on a shelf somewhere. He has to be built. And Denver built this one itself, out of the No. 30 pick in the 2022 draft.
The first warning sign had arrived back in October, when the Nuggets handed Christian Braun a five-year, $125 million extension and let Watson head into restricted free agency without a deal. Anyone who follows the league understood then that a clock had started running.
The real sting, though, is the price. Denver opened by asking for multiple first-round picks and swaps. The comparable restricted free agent of the summer, Walker Kessler, cost the Lakers two firsts and two swaps. Watson left for a single 2031 first and loose change. The problem isn’t that the Nuggets sold. It’s that they sold cheap.
The player who arrived
And now the other half of the story, which is sweeter than you might expect.
DeRozan is entering his 18th season, and last year, at 37, he still put up 18.4 points, 4.1 assists and 2.9 rebounds while shooting 49.7% from the field. That season ended a run of twelve consecutive years averaging at least 20 points a game — which is to say that even his decline is a level twenty-five teams would sign for this afternoon. He has played 74 or more games in each of the last five seasons and has never played fewer than 60 in his entire career. In the age of load management, that isn’t a footnote; it’s practically an eccentricity.
There is one number that tells the whole story of this signing on its own: DeRozan has started 1,252 of the 1,264 games of his career. All twelve of his bench appearances came in his rookie season, back in 2009-10. At 37, then, he is agreeing to come off the bench for the first time in any meaningful sense — and to do it on the smallest contract the league allows.
Why? Because in 2018 Toronto traded him to bring in Kawhi Leonard, and the Raptors won the championship the very next season without him. Eight years later, one of the finest scorers of his generation is still chasing the ring that passed him in the corridor. According to Chris Haynes, he spoke personally with Jokic, Murray and Gordon before signing. He wasn’t negotiating money. He was negotiating time.
The objection that accounting cannot answer
Here we have to be honest: DeRozan does not replace Watson. Not remotely.
One is 23, athletic, a genuine defender, shooting 41% from deep. The other is 37, owner of the prettiest midrange game of his generation and a 32% three-point shot — a manual gearbox in a league that went automatic years ago. DeRozan will provide shot creation, keep the offense upright while Jokic rests, and make baskets in the last five minutes. He will not be guarding Anthony Edwards in a playoff series.
And that is the question that matters in April, not in August.
There is also a precedent. Last summer Denver traded Michael Porter Jr. for a cheaper version of himself in Cam Johnson, plus picks. Johnson struggled. This summer Watson left for a 2031 first-rounder. The same pattern twice in two off-seasons isn’t a coincidence; it’s a policy. Denver’s local press put it bluntly: this was never about Watson’s money — he got paid. It was about the Kroenkes’ money.
Is Jokic the Nuggets’ biggest financial asset?
And yet the same picture supports an entirely different reading.
Because the Nuggets did not liquidate. They matched Oklahoma City’s $12 million offer sheet for Spencer Jones, knowingly pushing themselves deeper into the second apron. They kept Tyus Jones. They added Marvin Bagley III and Alpha Diallo, brought Lonnie Walker IV to camp, and have now added DeRozan. Fourteen of fifteen standard roster spots are filled. This is not a team cutting costs. It is a team shopping the clearance rack, because the collective bargaining agreement has locked the full-price aisles.
And here lies Denver’s real working hypothesis: that with Nikola Jokic in the middle, you don’t have to pay a premium for every good player. You simply have to find veterans who want to chase a title beside him, and turn them into surplus value.
The Serb isn’t merely the best player on the planet. He is also a form of currency. An insurance policy that pays out in roster quality. He is the difference between recruiting players and being chosen by them.
The trouble with insurance policies is that they expire. Jokic has deferred his extension until next summer, when he can sign a five-year supermax worth roughly $350 million. He said recently that he wants to stay. The Nuggets, for their part, carry three straight early exits on their back — this year to Minnesota in the first round, with Watson sidelined by a hamstring injury and Gordon limping through the series.
The 2031 pick arrives when Jokic will be 36. DeRozan arrives now.
The verdict
The truth is that Denver did not make a mistake. It made a choice, and choices are judged in hindsight. The Nuggets swapped five years of possible development for one season of proven production and a piece of paper that opens five summers from now. In the NBA’s second-apron era, where accounting has become a sixth man on the floor, that arithmetic has its logic.
If DeRozan gives them 15 points off the bench, if Braun absorbs the defensive load Watson left behind, and if Bagley holds the paint together in the ten minutes Jokic rests, nobody in June will remember August’s salary comparison.
And there is something people who have watched a lot of basketball know well: teams with a player like Jokic rarely lose because of numbers. They lose to injuries and to fatigue. If Denver reaches April healthy, with a 37-year-old who has waited eighteen years for a ring and a 31-year-old who already knows what it feels like to lift one, then this rented present will turn out to be the cheapest ticket to June an NBA team has ever bought.
