Today was the introductory press conference for Executive Vice President of Player Personnel Jon Wallace and Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Ben Tenzer into the Denver Nuggets organization. Vice Chairman Josh Kroenke presided over the presser, fielding a litany of questions about the process of hiring Wallace and Tenzer as well as other significant questions.
A lot has been made about the hirings and approach of Wallace and Tenzer to share the responsibilities as first-time leading executives. I called it “abnormal” in my opening question to Kroenke. He wanted to reframe it in another way: Unorthodox.
“I think that unorthodox could be another word. But I think that, you know, really most everything that has got us to this point has been unorthodox. We’ve hired first time guys before and our best player is the 41st pick in a very unorthodox manner, the way he plays the game. So everything about us is unorthodox.”
What isn’t unorthodox is the qualifications of both Wallace and Tenzer. While new at their current positions, it’s pretty clear they’ve made an impression around the league with their front office strengths. Wallace will focus on player personnel as is clearly outlined, while Tenzer will have responsibilities on the operations side of the team, managing a difficult salary cap structure and second apron culture all the while.
“Just my relationships with the guys, relationships around the league,” Wallace shared of what he brings to the table in the Nuggets front office. “I think the collaboration that we’ll bring as a group and kind of being able to galvanize that is going to help me obviously add to my strengths here and to kind of empower the individuals that we already have in place.”
Wallace was with the Nuggets for three years before departing with former General Manager Tim Connelly to work with the Minnesota Timberwolves. He’s lauded around the league for his relationships and connections as well as his eye for talent, having learned on the job from several evaluators.
Tenzer has been with the Nuggets organization since 2005 as an intern, slowly working his way up the organizational ladder for 20 years: “As an intern, I did every job here, and I ended up going to law school, learning about the cap and contracts, managing people. I was the GM at the Gold, so I feel like just us two together in terms of collaboration will be really healthy.
How the Nuggets balance this relationship will be very interesting. Kroenke shared that he would oversee things for a while in this period of transition but wouldn’t be a “day-to-day” leader. For this particular offseason, that’s probably fine, especially because the Nuggets are very clearly putting out to the world that the moves they have to make are “marginal” type moves.
“Where we have to be really conscious of the margins. We’ve got to be very deliberate,” Wallace shared when asked about building a team around Denver’s structure. “With [Nikola Jokic], he’s obviously a generational talent, and how he helps out and how he elevates the level play of so many people around him.”
“We’ve got to make sure that we find some more shooting, obviously address some of the defensive concerns, but I think we have both young individuals here that can step up and do that as we continue to develop them. [Also] we’ll look outside [the organization] and see what makes sense.”
Beyond unorthodox, the word of the day was margins. Whether that’s emphasizing how close the Nuggets are to another championship or breaking down the difficulties involving the second apron.
“I think it’s important to hit on the margins more than ever,” Tenzer emphasized about adding to the roster in free agency. “You’re hard capped at certain situations, so you just have to be aware of what you spend and how that affects essentially where you’re hard capped at.”
“We have to remember there’s a core group here that won a championship a couple years ago. When these guys are healthy and at their best, you know, they’re one of the best starting lineups in the entire league,” Wallace declared. “So, just to kind of put certain skills, certain things that can kind of alleviate the ceiling of us and just kind of add compliments to [Coach David Adelman’s] Toolbox.”
The Nuggets are setting the table for what’s expected to be a quiet offseason, not just because it’s their choice, but because it kind of has to be. While I put together some hypothetical scenarios involving trades of Jamal Murray, Michael Porter, and even Aaron Gordon in order to alleviate some of the financial burden Denver is facing, they would probably make the Nuggets worse in the short term. KSE doesn’t want to get worse. They are happy with where the roster is, specifically Stan Kroenke, and are comfortable in this space of winning 50+ games and being competitive in the playoffs every year.
So, the natural follow-up question is what’s next if Denver won’t shift the core group? Wallace emphasizing improving the shooting and the defense around the starters, but also that there were some candidates internally (likely Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther) who could contribute to those improvements as well.
Extension conversations with Christian Braun and Peyton Watson will be interesting, because the Nuggets can’t realistically extend those two within entering the second apron anyway. The Nuggets may not feel that this offseason is the one to make the radical changes and that next offseason is the better time to do so. I don’t necessarily agree, but that depends on how close the Nuggets actually are.
Finally, there was some interesting discussion on Nikola Jokic today. I asked Kroenke whether the Nuggets would offer Jokic a max extension this offseason and if he thought Jokic would accept:
“We’re definitely going to offer it. I’m not sure if he’s going to accept it or not because we’re also going to explain every financial parameter around him. Signing now versus signing later, be completely transparent. That’s the way we always are. And then he makes the best decision for himself and his family and we’ll support him in it.”
Jokic is eligible for a three-year $210 million extension on July 8th, just two weeks away from today. There’s a world where it’s better for Jokic to wait for a four-year deal the next offseason, but the Nuggets will surely prefer to have a long term commitment from Jokic sooner rather than later. He has two more seasons left on his deal in 2025-26 and 2026-27 before a large player option in 2027-28.
Lastly, Kroenke implied that the second apron was so dangerous that if the Nuggets entered into it, and a poor sequences of events occurred, it might force him to consider trading Jokic in the future.
“I think that for us as an organization, going into that second apron is not necessarily something that we’re scared of. I think that there are rules around it that we needed to be very careful of with our injury history. The wrong person gets injured, and very quickly, you’re into a scenario where that I never want to have to contemplate, and that’s trading #15 [Jokic]. And so, we’re very conscious of that pushing forward and providing the resources that we can when the moment arrives. But that second apron, is it a hard cap? I’m not 100% sure, but it’s something that teams are obviously very aware of going forward.”
Reading between the lines here, Kroenke appears worried about a scenario where two players that have had long term injuries in Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. get injured again (he didn’t say their names but it’s easy to ascertain). IF they become impossible to move, that would force Denver to consider abandoning ship on their contender and trading their best player away instead. There are a lot of leaps there, but it also implies that the Nuggets may currently be too beholden to both Murray and Porter if that’s an actual concern the Nuggets have.
It’s not a great way to frame things unfortunately, but it’s the way Kroenke chose. Will the Nuggets ever get to that point where trading Jokic is an actual possibility? I doubt it was on the front of Nuggets fans’ minds until today.
To close, everything about today’s press conference was fairly unorthodox as Kroenke emphasized early on. Tomorrow is the NBA Draft. The Nuggets don’t have a pick (and they effectively shared they will keep their eyes on the phone lines but probably not do anything to get too involved). They have three roster spots open and might create more if they make a small trade or two. Who handles those calls? It will be everybody at that table, collaborating together on the future of the Nuggets organization. Everyone’s on the same page right now. That might change in the future, and the Nuggets front office will have to adjust accordingly.
We will see how it pans out, but I’m left with more questions than answers after today.