According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the Denver Nuggets have signed JaMychal Green.
Green should be familiar to Nuggets fans as the unheralded Los Angeles Clipper who often was found burying three pointers from the corner in the Western Conference Semifinals. After forward Jerami Grant signed a three year, sixty million dollar deal with the Detroit Pistons the Nuggets were left to find a replacement for the perimeter defender and three point shooter role that Grant had occupied so well in the playoffs. Green appears to be that replacement.
The Nuggets will be the fourth team for the thirty year old 6’8” combo forward. He shot 38.7% from three last season with Clippers on 3.8 attempts while also playing strong defense. Being a member of a team that featured Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, Lou Williams, Montrezl Harrell and others, Green should be very comfortable with playing a more complementary role in the Nuggets rotation, a sticking point for Grant according to T.J. McBride with Mile High Sports.
Mike Singer of The Denver Post also reported at that time that the Nuggets were interested in JaMychal as a replacement. A few hours later and the deal is done.
Even with Grant and still teammate Mason Plumlee, who also signed with the Detroit Pistons, no longer counting against the Nuggets cap sheet Denver does not have outright cap space to absorb Green’s new deal. The most likely scenario seems to be to use the Nuggets mid-level exception to sign Green. However, doing so would use nearly all of the dollars allocated for said exception meaning the Nuggets would have very little wiggle room to make any other free agent deals. With the reported signing of Facundo Campazzo early today, the Nuggets would almost certainly have to also use their bi-annual exception money to absorb that deal.
Outside of those two exceptions, because Jamal Murray’s new contract has kicked in while both Will Barton, Gary Harris and Nikola Jokic get the annual bumps negotiated into their contracts, there is no cap space to speak of for Denver. Paul Millsap also remains a free agent and while he too should cost far less than the $30+ million price tag he played under last season, the Nuggets just don’t have much left they can spend.
Millsap remains one of the few options for Denver. Because he is the Nuggets own free agent and has played for them for the past three years the Nuggets have many options to negotiate with him specifically. Most importantly they can exceed the cap to sign him (same goes for free agent Torrey Craig, with some small differences) or pick up another player in a sign and trade deal. Uncle Paul could be well served to stay right here in Denver with Grant gone. Green will help fill the void left by Grant’s departure, but the Nuggets are still very thin at the forward spot, at least in terms of proven forwards. Michael Porter Jr should be expected to see a large increase in minutes, but outside of him Denver has just rookie Zeke Nnaji (whose probably more of a center given the current roster construction) and seldom used Bol Bol, Keita Bates-Diop and Vlatko Cancar on the roster.
Without a doubt, Green is the first step to the backup plan after the Nuggets lost out on Grant. His signing does eliminate some other possibilities in the free agent market, but he is perfectly suited to fill in at a suddenly huge hole on the roster. Welcome to Denver JaMychal!
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