{"id":724827,"date":"2026-06-25T09:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T09:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/724827\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T09:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T09:07:08","slug":"nuggets-wanted-to-trade-up-for-a-point-guard-gms-say-denver-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/724827\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuggets wanted to trade up for a point guard, GMs say \u2013 Denver Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plan A for the Denver Nuggets wasn\u2019t to use their first round pick at No. 26 to trade down into three second rounders, which is what they did<\/a>. Nope, the front office\u2019s first thought was actually to trade up in the first round and to target a point guard.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how the Nuggets would\u2019ve gotten there as not a single player with an active salary was dealt during the 2026 NBA Draft as part of a swap for a selection. And the Nuggets didn\u2019t have any future firsts to offer outright, just first-round pick swaps and second rounds. So Denver\u2019s best offer was likely to package starting small forward Cameron Johnson<\/a>, who is about to be in the final season of his contract, with their pick to move higher.<\/p>\n

But very few teams have cap space in the range that likely would\u2019ve gotten the Nuggets. And again, nobody did a trade like the one we\u2019re talking about during this year\u2019s event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were guys we liked in the first round that went higher than we expected,\u201d co-GM Jonathan Wallace said<\/a>. \u201cAnytime that happens, you see how important those picks are and it got a little expensive to move up. We saw an opportunity to re-stock the war chest a bit with things we\u2019ve been missing and once we replenished that a bit we saw some guys that addressed some needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nuggets turned No. 26 and No. 49 into forwards Trevon Brazile (No. 35) and Bryce Hopkins and two future second-round picks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got two extra seconds we feel good about and you can look around the league and see what seconds can get you,\u201d co-GM Ben Tenzer said. \u201cIt\u2019s tough to not have as many things as other teams but through the years we\u2019ve given assets for other options at the times and this is what is and we\u2019re comfortable with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of going forward, had the Nuggets somehow pulled it off, their target was a point guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we did tonight was try to plug a few holes with toughness, defensive ability and rebounding but now it\u2019s about seeing what we can do with creativity and ball handling,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cIt was a heavy point guard draft, there was a lot of guys we liked but they just didn\u2019t fall to our area and we tried to make some moves to get up but we\u2019re not the only team that wants elite point guards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who the Nuggets were targeting isn\u2019t known for sure but the morning of the draft Alabama\u2019s Labaron Philon Jr., who fell to the 76ers at No. 22, was mocked to Denver by ESPN. There was also a lot of smoke around Stanford\u2019s Ebuka Okorie, who went No. 17. Eight of the top 22 picks could be considered lead ball handlers, with the Nuggets just missing the end of the batch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe feel, the resources in this draft, that\u2019s what you had to look for,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets will now have to turn to the trade and free agent markets to address ball handling, something that\u2019s been needed since the 2024 playoff loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plan A for the Denver Nuggets wasn\u2019t to use their first round pick at No. 26 to trade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-724827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}