- Has a $3,468,960 participant choice
One good factor for the Nuggets heading into this offseason is that they’ll have little free company to take care of. Their three two-way gamers (Trey Alexander, PJ Corridor and Spencer Jones) will all want new offers, DeAndre Jordan will in all probability need a fourth consecutive minimal wage, Dario Saric additionally has a participant choice that he needs to be anticipated to train, and Vlatko Cancar’s sheer endurance may nicely see him get a sixth season. He by no means a lot performed, however then, he never did.
Of the rotation gamers, solely Westbrook may enter free company this season, if he declines his participant choice for the minimal wage. And he may. Coming into the ultimate phases of his enigmatic profession, Westbrook – who at one level in his profession appeared recent out of suitors – had a fairly good consolidation season. In 75 common season video games with 36 begins, he averaged 13.3 points, 6.1 assists and 4.9 rebounds per sport, inevitably down from his triple-double heyday but nonetheless a ton of manufacturing from a person who turns 37 in November. As ever, there is no such thing as a one else fairly like Russ.
Westbrook’s whirlwind, dynamic, brave-to-the-point-of-reckless model of play is well-documented, and won’t change now. Nor, it appears, does he want it to. He’s self-aware, unrepentant and intensely gifted, in a approach hardly ever earlier than seen, and the occasional second of chaos is the value of getting what Nuggets President Josh Kroenke calls Westbrook’s “spice“. Basketball at all times requires a sure stage of chaos, each to present the defenses one thing sudden to take care of and to present the followers one thing to observe; Westbrook, unmistakably, is that. He provides qualities to the Nuggets if not quite a lot of surety.
For the minimal wage, warts and all, they won’t do higher. Cagier, sure. Higher, no.