{"id":3049,"date":"2025-07-18T12:03:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T12:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/3049\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T12:03:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T12:03:13","slug":"nuggets-notes-valanciunas-adelman-rotation-holmes-wallace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/3049\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuggets Notes: Valanciunas, Adelman, Rotation, Holmes, Wallace"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the Nuggets have made it clear they expect Jonas Valanciunas<\/a> to honor his contract, which will pay him $10.4MM next season, they also recognize they will need to make a concerted effort to help the Lithuanian center feel \u201ccomfortable and content\u201d with the idea of spending (at least) the next year with the team, according to Bennett Durando of The Denver Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Valanciunas was reportedly interested<\/a> in signing a three-year deal with Greek club Panathinaikos this summer but he still has one guaranteed year left on his NBA contract. Denver went through with its trade<\/a> for Valanciunas and intends to have him on the roster this fall, though it remains to be seen how the 33-year-old feels about that idea, since his public comments haven\u2019t revealed much to this point, Durando notes.<\/p>\n

Head coach David Adelman said during a Summer League broadcast that he viewed Valanciunas as a \u201cpoint center<\/a>\u201d of sorts. In an interview with Durando, he clarified what he meant.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a bona fide, big-time center over the last decade who you can put in a bunch of different spots all over the floor,\u201d Adelman told The Post. \u201cAnd when I say \u2018point center,\u2019 I mean someone you can play through in the half-court. I don\u2019t envision him getting a rebound and pushing the ball up. I do think some of the things we already do (work with him): playing five-out with back-side dribble hand-offs, playing off the elbows, posting him up against smaller lineups, his ability to make others better.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the assist numbers that matter to me. It\u2019s his ability to start ball movement through the impact of who he is. So he\u2019s an enormous get. I\u2019m super excited about getting him here, getting him acclimated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more on the Nuggets:<\/p>\n

From his comments, it seems clear that Adelman envisions Valanciunas having a significant role off the bench. But Adelman told Durando<\/a> that free agent additions Bruce Brown<\/a> and Tim Hardaway Jr.<\/a> will have to earn whatever minutes they receive next season. \u201cThose guys have to compete for spots. That\u2019s new guys included. They all know that,\u201d the coach said. \u201cWe\u2019re very excited about some of the things those guys have done through their careers. We expect them to come to compete like they\u2019ve done, and there\u2019s a reason they\u2019ve all played in rotations across the league. But this is going to be an open competition. I hope our young guys understand that. \u2026 And all those guys will complement Jonas. It\u2019s gonna be the guys who earn these spots that get to play with him.\u201d
\nSecond-year big man DaRon Holmes<\/a> is back in action at Summer League a year after suffering a torn Achilles tendon, which sidelined him for his entire rookie season. Holmes recognizes it\u2019s going to take him some time to adjust to playing five-on-five again, Durando writes in another story for The Denver Post<\/a>. \u201cI always see people that are like, \u2018Hey, this guy didn\u2019t play well! This guy didn\u2019t!\u2019 It\u2019s Summer League,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cNot even just for me; for all the other athletes out here playing. A lot of the rooks. They\u2019re getting used to it. So it just takes some time. It\u2019s like when you\u2019re first playing when you\u2019re a freshman going into college. That\u2019s how it feels.\u201d
\nVinny Benedetto of The Denver Gazette<\/a> details how Nuggets executive vice president of player personnel Jon Wallace made a habit of proving people wrong during his time at Georgetown. Wallace\u2019s former college coach thinks he\u2019s well suited for his new job. \u201cJon Wallace is a hoop head, who, oh, by the way, is also extremely intelligent, who, oh, by the way, is a connector and understands the dynamics of putting a unit together,\u201d John Thompson III told Benedetto. \u201cHe\u2019ll be able to take the owner\u2019s vision and be able to execute that. I think he will do many aspects of the job at a very high level.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the Nuggets have made it clear they expect Jonas Valanciunas to honor his contract, which will pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,3892,4699,4700,3902,85,4701],"class_list":["post-3049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-bruce-brown","tag-daron-holmes","tag-jon-wallace","tag-jonas-valanciunas","tag-sports","tag-tim-hardaway-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}