B/R Staff: 10 Storylines That Will Define the 2024-2025 NBA Season | News, scores, highlights, stats and rumors

Letting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk around this offseason, despite any framing you see or hear, is not something the Denver Nuggets needed to do. Yes, the second apron is punitive and restrictive. But the Nuggets have a title favorite-type window. You maximize that at all costs, and figure out the rest later.

Denver is instead betting on internal development and extending its championship timeline. Well, that, or it’s just plain cheap.

Christian Braun, Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther are all intriguing – even proven – enough to show that this isn’t necessarily the case. (Though the Nuggets could have just paid KCP and continued grooming the youth, but I digress.) But are they good enough at this point to maximize Denver’s current run? Or will they not peak for years, plural – time that the Nuggets don’t necessarily have with Nikola Jokić in his 30s and Aaron Gordon one season out of free agency (player option)?