For the first time since the George Karl era there are reasons to be hopeful about the Denver Nuggets. A potential star fell to them at No. 7 in Emmanuel Mudiay. They rid themselves of Brian Shaw. Gallinari appears to be back. A lot of good things seem to be in the mix, but the growing optimism seems to be limited within the Colorado borders.
Recently Chad Ford and Kevin Pelton of ESPN.com released their Future Power Rankings in the NBA. This model predicts how each team will do over the next three seasons. Their prognosis for the Nuggets is not good.
Ford predicts that the Nuggets will be the worst team in the Northwest with a pretty big gap between the rest of the pack. He has the Utah Jazz ranked the highest (8), with Oklahoma City (9), Portland (18) and Minnesota (19) well ahead of the Nuggets (24).
“They (Nuggets) have some talent, but their inexperienced management team doesn’t seem to know how to move forward,” Ford wrote in the piece.
He would acknowledge that Mudiay is a positive and the Nuggets will add future lottery picks in the next couple season as well which will help, but that is their only positives.
“Denver’s roster, management and money ratings are all below average.”
Not only are the Nuggets in the cellar of their division, but they are the third to last ranked team in the Western Conference. Only the Los Angeles Lakers (26) and Sacramento Kings (29) are behind them.
Are there questions surrounding the future of the Nuggets? Of course. However, this prediction seems to be a bit on the extreme side. None of us can accurately predict the future three years down the line of NBA franchises, especially in the free agent era, but for the sake of Nuggets fans everywhere, lets hope Ford is completely wrong with this one.
