Mapping Out The 2024 Draft For The Denver Nuggets

June 17th, 2024

Last year, the Denver Nuggets were the reigning NBA champions, and they were able to defeat the Boston Celtics to win the 2023 NBA Finals, mostly due to the individual brilliance of their superstar center Nikola Jokic and star guard Jamal Murray, but also due to their depth and strong play of unsung hero types such as Aaron Gordon, Bruce Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Christian Braun, amid others, as well as getting strong coaching from their head coach Michael Malone. Meanwhile, naysayers would say that it also helped that they never came across a 50-plus win team in the playoffs last year, and that they had it easy. But despite that, a championship is a championship, and the Nuggets were NBA champions last year at the end of the 2022-23 season.

After the Nuggets won the 2023 NBA championship, their surprising ouster in the second round series and loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves makes this season ultimately disappointing for the Denver Nuggets, but they will be back as title contenders next year.
(Photo: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images, via The Globe and Mail)

This season, they chose not to re-sign Bruce Brown or some of their other veterans, and they opted to try to inject some new blood by handing Malone three drafted rookies on their roster, with neither of them becoming valuable playoff contributors in the postseason. They tried to lean much more heavily onto Christian Braun (who played very well in his role last year) and previously little-used swingman Peyton Watson (who did have a good regular season this year), But Malone didn’t trust Watson after his shooting woes against Minnesota, and this led to a shortened bench, and Denver struggled to generate as much offense or to get stops, and they ended up losing to the Timberwolves in the second round of the playoffs. They seemed to have overestimated the value of their starters, and they weren’t able to match up to the Timberwolves.

In the offseason, they will need 3 and D players that can shoot and defend, stretch bigs that can open up the floor, and they will need shooters that can space the floor on offense, but defenders that can guard the toughest offensive players in games. Late in the draft, that would be no easy feat to find, but there are always players that could be able to do that for them, either next season or in the future.

Kyle Filipowski would be a great value pick if he’s available at 28. He would help them load manage Nikola Jokic to give him more rest, and Filipowski is an offensively skilled, energetic big man whose versatility could help them open up the floor and create mismatches that would swing in his team’s favor.

But in case if Filipowski won’t be there at 28, and I don’t think he will be there at 28, then they would likely have to turn to other options to figure out who they want to select at that spot. Kel’el Ware was another player I decided to select in one of the other test simulations, but I don’t think he’ll be there at 28 either in real life, so there may be other options at play there.

So here is who I selected for the Denver Nuggets in the three test simulations of the ESPN’s 2024 NBA Mock Draft Simulator.

Test Simulation #1:

A mock draft board for the Minnesota Timberwolves. First test simulation. Image courtesy of Fanspo. — A mock draft board for the Denver Nuggets. First test simulation. Image courtesy of Fanspo.

Test Simulation #2:

A mock draft board for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Second test simulation. Image courtesy of Fanspo. — A mock draft board for the Denver Nuggets. Second test simulation. Image courtesy of Fanspo.

Test Simulaton #3:

A mock draft board for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Third test simulation. Image courtesy of Fanspo. — A mock draft board for the Denver Nuggets. Third test simulation. Image courtesy of Fanspo.

So there you have it. Thanks for reading.