Apparently the rent is too damn high in Denver, or at least the cost of a one-year rental of Paul George. According to ESPN’s Zach Lowe, Denver has taken themselves out of the market for Indiana’s Laker-bound all-star.

You look at teams that sort of have like, the assets to go after Paul George…Phoenix jumps out, Phoenix has 9,000 young players and draft picks. The Sixers, still. The Nuggets are out of extra firsts but they have a bundle of interesting young prospects, too many to even play them all. And all of them, particularly Denver and Phoenix, have very recently chased star players and been open about it. Like Denver offered for Paul George last February and have been very open about ‘we want a big name here, even if it’s on a short term deal. They went after Dwyane Wade, this and that. But none of those three teams are buzzing about Paul George right now because he gets there, and they’re still not good, and they know that makes it very difficult for them to build a case for him to stay. And I think that’s an interesting sort of, like, what are the ripple effects of just being mediocre or bad for two or three years in a row is like, that’s one of the ripple effects, it takes you out of the race like this, because you just fear your ability to make a case.

This is the beginning of the craziest two weeks of the year so take any rumors with a grain of salt, even those coming from reliable sources like Zach Lowe. However, this rumor also seems to make the most sense from Denver’s standpoint. George would certainly help the Nuggets but he’d almost certainly cost too much to make his one season worthwhile. But, also according to Lowe, there are people out there who feel George might regret demanding a Lakers trade since they are so bad and might even be open to testing free agency again in 2018.

There are teams around the league that are inter who are rooting for him to be traded to the Lakers now, so that he goes there and they suck, and he says, ‘oh boy, I need to get somewhere else. Let me look around again and see where I can get. And then those teams will chase him in free agency having surrendered nothing and having watched the Lakers surrender real things.

For now, it appears as though Denver is out of the hunt for Paul George. You can listen to the entire podcast right here.