Your word is "formaldehyde". Can you use it in a sentence? As you're sitting in your basement, you hit your vape, but then your mom walks in, freaks out, and starts listing the toxic chemicals you could be inhaling into your body, like formaldehyde. Which she singles out because it's the same chemical used to preserve your uncle Rico's funky-smelling taxidermied fox. Formaldehyde. Ugh. Vaping can expose you to toxic chemicals like formaldehyde. No need to spell it out any more than that. Brought to you by the real cost and FDA. [Music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Well, it is up, everybody. Thank you all for joining me on the latest morecast part of the CSU Network. Oh, of course, it was Jeff Morton. Today is part two of my exploration of dream, just speculative dream and nightmare scenarios for the Denver Nuggets. This off-season to reiterate something I did in part one, these are just fantasies, not based on any sort of information. It's just things I'm thinking about. So, once again, disclaimer, this is just me spitballing, has nothing to do with anything, no reporting, anything like that. This is just me throwing shit out there, see what's happening. And there's a lot of different ways that I have envisioned this going for the Denver Nuggets. And the last one was the fantastical one. And the one in number two, the part two today, is something that is kind of more realistic, but not really. It's kind of right down the middle between ultimate realism, which is going to be the final installment of this series next Monday. And the one last week, which was just complete, you know, it would never happen in a million years kind of thing. So, but before I do that, I want to talk to you about bet online. Bet online is your number one source for the NBA Finals. It's Stanley Cup Finals this season. 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That's promo code BLEV and all caps for your 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit. Bet online, the game starts here. All right, so we're going to get deep into this, some would say ridiculousness that I have been talking about lately, but I can say that this, the realities of the second apron, and there's going to be an article coming out either today or tomorrow about that that I wrote on Denver Stiffs. Well, the reality of the CBA is going to start dawning on everyone. And I don't think the nuggets are quite there yet, which is concerning to me. But there is this realization that the NBA, what the NBA wants is a pseudo hard cap, which is what the second apron is. So in that scenario, once you get into, like if the nuggets say, "Resign Kentavious Call of Hope," what's going to be happening is they would end up into the second apron. And what that would subsequently do is lock them into their roster, aside from any draft picks or potential minimum signings that come to Denver. As we've proved last year, minimum signings coming to Denver is a really hard thing. Even with the nuggets winning a championship, it's very clear that the nuggets don't have that attraction still that the other free agent destinations have in the NBA. It's just a fact of life. So one of these things that you have to do is something that I'm proposing today, which is the trade scenario and really getting ahead of the curve. Honestly, this is my preferred, if the nuggets were going to be listening to Jeff Morton, and I don't see any way they should. But what I would say is get ahead of it and do what the New England Patriots did because while it's easier to reform your roster with non-guaranteed contracts and stuff like that, there will be not another league that ever has non-guaranteed deals. It was only exclusive to the NBA. Other leagues have seen what the effect of non-guaranteed deals is on the players in the NFL, and they hate it, so it's not ever going to happen. And just below that is franchise tags and stuff like that are not going to happen in other leagues. So the NBA has gone this direction. Parity is in our future. And what the New England Patriots had done for 20-something years while Tom Brady was there was the best player quotient, which is essentially, as long as you have that once-in-a-generation kind of talent in there, it makes everything you do subsequently a lot easier, even if it annoys Tom Brady, which happened several times in the 20-year career of Tom Brady. What essentially needed to happen was to get ahead of the curve, getting out from guys before they go on their decline, moving on and getting better players seeing the curve. And the Nuggets, I don't think, are there, which is kind of concerning to me. But one of the things that they can do is begin exploring trades to give themselves some freedom. And they can only do that before they get into the second apron. Now, there's a lot of, and I think, valid talk about the Nuggets needing to just double down with this starting lineup and just make do. They won 57 games this year, and there's a rationale behind that. There's a rationale behind sticking with what you got. And I do not blame people for having that point of view. But in the scenario I'm painting today, what the Nuggets would need to be doing is seeing, okay, we cannot do, because since, by the way, this isn't a cheap thing. This, every team in the NBA now is terrified of the second apron. It is onerous. You cannot do anything once you're in it. If you'd make a trade while you're in the second apron, it has to be 100% matching and you can't combine salaries to get to a number. The NBA has always been this, you have to be in within a percentage of a trade. You know, it does, it's not like other leagues where you can just trade body for body and stuff like that. This is truly a, this is truly a within the structures of what's happening within the CBA. And once you're in the second apron, you have to match 100% of the person you're trading. And you can't combine people. So essentially your ability to sweeten a trade is all limited by your ability to trade draft picks. And the Nuggets really don't have any draft picks to trade for quite a while. So the Nuggets are kind of in this scenario where if they get into the second apron, anything they do, it's going to be severely restricted. And this is not going to be necessarily affected by the rising of the cap in this next year following this, because they have three deals that are taking up a percentage of their cap. So really, if the Nuggets are going to do anything, they have to do it before they get into the second apron, which would mean any decision on Contabious Caldwell Pope. If they don't want to get into the second apron and they don't sign a Resign Contabious Caldwell Pope, that will tell you actually what they think about starting lineup and what they intend to do with the three max deals. So in this scenario, I'm envisioning the Nuggets, getting ahead of it and making a deal, probably trading Michael Porter Jr. Now, another side of this that people kind of refuse to even think about is that Jamal is up for an extension right now. I mean, at the end of this next season, he will be an unrestricted free agent and they have this year to get a deal done. And I don't know what the strictures are to get Jamal signed to an extension. I don't know what the timeframe is on that. And when they can start negotiating, I believe they can do it now, or at least at the beginning of the new league year. And then there is a deadline within the year where they have to stop negotiating. So there's that where if they don't sign him to it, he's going to be an unrestricted free agent. So I don't know when that is. You're going to have to talk to people smarter than me about the business of the NBA, specifically one Ryan Blackburn, who I'm sure has plugged in on that. So there's a lot of different latches and levers. Say that if the Nuggets were able to trade Michael Porter Jr. Michael Porter Jr. is actually the second on the max tier here because Jamal only has a year left. They have three max deals. What I have been trying to tell people is the era of three max contracts on a roster is gone. This will not happen again unless teams are like we have got like four years where we can maximize this roster with this amount of salary and they structure it to where it's not painful in the future. And the Nuggets unfortunately are caught between eras. So really truly the only because Nicole Yokits is not going anywhere. The only contract you can really talk about is Michael Porter Jr. of the max deals. Or Aaron Gordon will get to that in a bit. So if the Nuggets were on a inclined to do a trade, I would advise them to trade Michael Porter Jr. now because they're not going to get much value for Michael Porter Jr. It's just not a tremendous amount of value because of his max deal. But if you get into the second apron, so if they sign Contavius Caldwell Pope, you'll get into the second apron and it becomes that much more onerous to try to trade Michael Porter Jr. Or essentially if you get into the second apron, it means that Mike's going to be on the roster. So you would have to, in this scenario I'm talking about, do it during the draft. So maybe you have your pick and lay around. You package Mike with that pick to get to, well you couldn't do that because you can't trade that pick. But there is a scenario where you can make a trade during the draft maybe to get some more picks or do that. Now before you get into the second apron, I don't know who they were trading for. To be honest with you, anyone you trade Michael Porter Jr. for, your offense will take a hit because Mike's unique and he fits uniquely well within the yokech thing. But if the Nuggets were going to make a trade, it would essentially either have to be during the draft or they would have to signal they're not going to sign KCP and do it after the new league year starts. And that's where all this timing is really key. If they intend on signing KCP and they still wanted to make a trade, they would have to do it, make any sort of trade they do prior to the new league year, which is always July 1st. Keep that in mind. And people say it would be easier to do during the draft, I don't necessarily know if that's true. Mike is a depressed asset, even though he played 81 games last year, it's just, it is what it is, the guys had three back surgeries. He's more valuable to the Nuggets than he is to other teams, which is why I'm conclined to believe that MPJ is likely to be on this roster. I don't see a lot of scenarios that the Nuggets can package. I mean, like trading a future 20, 30 something pick, it's not going to move a needle unless you're anticipating Nicole Yokech being gone by then, which would indicate a bet on the future and the Nuggets. But all that stuff, it's going to be, it would be difficult to trade MPJ and just putting it to that way. As much as I think the Nuggets should explore everything and include, I've said that right after the season ended, the Nuggets needed to explore trades with Mike. I'm acknowledging to you right now, it would be very difficult to trade Mike, but it would be easier to do during the draft if you were going to explore that. In the second half of the podcast, I'm going to talk about another piece of this in which is Aaron Gordon, and his importance to the Nuggets and how in this scenario, maybe you would have to sacrifice Gordon in order to give yourself flexibility. But first, I want to talk to you about Blanchard Family Wines, located between 18th and 19th, and Blaken Wasey in beautiful lower downtown Denver, Colorado, just a couple blocks away from course field, or in the middle of Derryblock. They're always online at www.bfwcolorado.com. They're on Facebook and Instagram and Blanchard Family Wines. One of my favorite places to go in Denver, they're right there in the Derryblock, very conveniently located next to a bunch of restaurants. So if you're going down for a night out, the Rockies aren't in town. During the middle of the weekend, it's a great place to pre-game it, get yourself a drink and just walk to any of the many restaurants in that lower downtown area in between Blaken Wasey. There's great, great places to go. Last time I did this, I stopped at Blanchard and I went to the Chop House. The Chop House is just two blocks away. It's great and convenient. It's a great place to walk. But there's many other options that you can take, and if you just want to go down there for an afternoon, get yourself a glass of red. You just have a glass of white. They've got some great selection of wines. My favorite is probably the Pino right now, but they've got a great Cabernet. And they've got a great selection of whites and rislings and partnerships with Western Slope wineries. They've also got a location in Fort Collins. They've got a location in Golden and of course their original location in Sonoma County. Once again, they're located between 18th and 19th and Blaken Wasey in beautiful Lower downtown Denver, Colorado, just a couple blocks away from Coorsfield. Right in the middle of the Derryblock, they're always online at www.bfwcolorado.com. They're on Facebook and Instagram under Blanchard Faming Wines. When you go in, or you talk to them, tell them Jeff Morton from CSU podcast sent you there. Your word is formaldehyde. Can you use it in a sentence? As you're sitting in your basement, you hit your vape, but then your mom walks in, freaks out and starts listing the toxic chemicals you could be inhaling into your body like formaldehyde. Which she singles out because it's the same chemical used to preserve your uncle Rico's funky smelling taxidermied fox. Formaldehyde. vaping can expose you to toxic chemicals like formaldehyde. No need to spell it out any more than that. Brought to you by the real cost and FDA. It occurred to me in a flash that we keep talking about the three max contracts that the Nuggets have. And really truly, Aaron Gordon is a, you know, my thoughts still go out to Aaron Gordon. He's probably one of the most, if not the most tradable asset in the Nuggets. He would fit onto every chain. If the Nuggets were looking to get ahead of the curve and make a radical change, they could trade Gordon. We kind of don't think that it would be a good idea considering his synergy with Nicole Yokich. And I would not personally advocate this. I think they need to get relief from the max contracts. So the guys that need to be dealt are one of the three guys that are on max deals and it's obviously not going to be Yokich. So that is kind of where I'm thinking. It's like, well, it's the max deals which are linked to the cap going up and all that stuff. It's always a percentage of the cap. You're not going to get any relief when the new media deal comes in and the cap's jumped 10%. You're just not going to do it. You need to get relief from the max part. And trading Aaron Gordon won't do that. But in this scenario, the person who has the most value really truly other than Nicole Yokich is probably Aaron Gordon. Jamal Murray is different because Jamal's in his last year and that really affects a bunch of different things. You could probably get a lot of value for Jamal if you wanted to trade him. But I don't know if that's in the nuggets thinking ever. And in quite frankly in this scenario, it wouldn't make a lot of sense because the nuggets don't have any point guards. So obviously the nuggets are kind of stuck with what they're going to be getting with Jamal. Really, truly Mike and KCP, not KCP, Mike and MPJ, Mike and MPJ, excuse me, Mike and Aaron Gordon. There we go, Mike and talk are really truly the only guys that you can get any sort of, first of all with Mike, you would be just getting off the max prior to the league year and getting into any potential second apron. Or you would be Aaron Gordon and he makes less, he makes 20,000 a year, 20,000, 20 million. I'm sorry, I'm talking too fast and I'm messing up what I mean to say. You know, there's that of the people, the nuggets in this scenario likely to be traded. I think actually Aaron Gordon is probably the least likely next to Nicole Okich. The nuggets like what Aaron Gordon brings with Nicole Okich and I really truly believe he is a valuable part of this team going forward. So let's talk about Jamal. I've said before, what the nuggets, the nuggets are getting into a very tricky, tricky part. They have to make a decision and they have a certain time in order to negotiate an extension with Jamal and I don't know how long that lasts here. So, like I said, Dr. Ryan Blackburn, see how long the nuggets have once they can start negotiating, which is as soon as the finals end. So as soon as the finals end, you know, you've got a window there to see if the nuggets of nuggets and Jamal are going to be signing any sort of extension. But the decision the nuggets need to make is whether they're not going to give Jamal a max. And that is where we are right now with the nuggets is the new reality of the CBA is there's a hard cap. So what that means is the nuggets are at a precarious position. They only have two ways they can go. You know, there's not going to be a lot of takers for Dziknaji and Reggie Jackson. It would be if they're going to salary dump them, it would have to be at a certain time before they're allowed to sign KCP, right? This also affects their depth. And right now the nuggets have no depth and they've signed a bunch of late round second round picks that are low ceiling players. So the attrition is going on and the nuggets are not replacing talent with talent. They're replacing essentially what they're doing is replacing lost talent with bodies. You know, and that's no offense to the people who are coming in or drafted. But there's a reason people are late second round picks. Yokech is a one in a billion. Draymond Green is a one in a billion. People who are drafted in this area generally do not get that high ceiling thing. Okay, so in this scenario, the nuggets are just going to have to make a decision. They're going to have to make a decision. They're going to have to trade someone because I do believe depth is going to be more valued now in the NBA. And depth and flexibility is going to be more valuable valued now than it has ever in the past. Because generally depth didn't mean anything in the playoffs. But you see the Dallas Mavericks make it to the NBA Finals. And it's now becoming more and more clear. You're going to need the ability to move and move pretty nimbally during the season. And the nuggets don't have the contracts right now in order to be able to adjust on the fly. Essentially, it is three guys at the top and it shouldn't be three guys. I keep focusing in on Mike because I do believe Mike is the guy who would be most expendable even though he's not. Because any trade you trade out, it's going to be a step back. Nuggets fans need to intellectualize this. You need to internalize this. You need to think about this. Any trade unless it's for superstar and anything happening with Mike, any trade you make, you are not going to get equal value back. He provides something extremely, extremely unique. And it's like replacing KCP with Christian Brown. The offense is just going to take a huge hit. It's just the way things are. And if the nuggets trade Mike, I would do it for a couple of guys. Probably the equivalent of the 30 million Mike would make during the year. I would get a couple 15 to $15 million guys. I don't know who's out there. To be honest with you, I'd love it if they got Alex Caruso. But he's not much of a three-point shooter. If you're going to go in and you're going to get a couple of guys, you're going to have to go in all in on a different approach. And maybe Caruso would be like a valuable defensive player rather than going in on offense. You change your team to be a more of a defensive-minded team. And you go that way. You turn yourself into a Minnesota Timberwolves kind of thing, where you only have two guys, two, three guys who can play offense. And then you have the rest of the guys who are primarily defensive players. You could go that direction. I think getting off of the third max deal would afford the nuggets a ton. An absolute ton of flexibility. And that is where we're at right now. This is where the NBA is going. They want you to basically, I think, this is just my opinion. The league is moving towards a two max deal, probably one max deal ideally scenario. Where they are essentially wanting to limit the amount of people who are taking up a large percentage of the cap based on how much the cap goes up and all this stuff, and link to that sort of thing. You don't want to get multiple people on a roster who are taking up that much of your cap. It's okay if it's one, and if it's a sub max guy or a guy who doesn't get the full max, maybe that's more palatable. But where the nuggets are, considering they're bridging the gap between the last CBA and this CBA, they're at a crux point to where they're really going to be hamstrung if they don't create flexibility. And what you saw last year with the Denver nuggets was they didn't have any flexibility, which is why they didn't make any moves in the deadline. They locked themselves in when they signed Reggie Jackson to the taxpayer mid-level. So they essentially were just kind of there. And I don't necessarily believe they were that aggressive at the trade deadline either. So it was you want more depth because you can't have another scenario where the nuggets run out of gas in the second round. And a lot of that was on the players after they all start break, but you can't have that scenario happen again. Michael Malone is obviously going to let them play like that. So you need to identify that one guy. And I keep coming back to Mike. As much as I think it would damage the nuggets, I think you have to take the hit now in order to make your team better. Hopefully soon. And it would be clunky. And by the way, I'm sorry, I'm not giving people ideas of who I would trade for to be quite honest with you. I just am thinking more on a overall big picture thing because the nuggets just need to not have three max contracts on their roster. And ideally, at least in my mind, this is the way the nuggets should go. They need to have an ability to be more nimble. They are so locked in right now. And this is why they keep drafting these low round players and hoping that one of them pops. Essentially, that is what it is. It's a wing and a prayer. And if you're a team that wants to win multiple championships, as Calvin Booth said in that Ringer interview last year, you can't replace talent you're losing with less talent. You just can't. It's an obvious thing. You can only depend on Nicole Yokech. It's so much to raise your ceiling. And obviously, any sort of trade that the nuggets make featuring Michael Porter Jr. likely in this scenario would make the team worse in the short term because Mike is that important and Mike is that good. But in the grand scheme of things, the nuggets flexibility and their ability to be nimble at the deadline and see things before other people is probably, at least to me, more important than the immediate and keeping Mike on the roster. And I keep coming back to MPJ needing being that third max deal and just needing the nuggets needing the freedom to not have that much of their cap taken up. And I really do think that if I was running the Denver Nuggets is what I would do, I would try to find a deal to trade Mike for two players. And this is less, I mean, to wrap this up, this is less likely to happen than anything. Not as least likely as the first scenario, but obviously I can see how the nuggets are probably going to go all in on this starting five. I do believe that according to Josh Cronke, that he believes that in the starting five. So in the next podcast, I'm going to be talking about scenario number three. Scenario number three is going to center around doing nothing, essentially, and what that means for the future. And by doing nothing, I mean both scenarios of losing KCP and keeping KCP. What that means for the future and what that means for the nuggets going into this 24/25 season. All right, thank you all for joining me on the latest morecast. I'm going to be back on Friday with another episode. Goodbye. 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Part two of Jeff's fantasy looks at the Denver Nuggets offseason. This week Jeff talks about how the Nuggets would need to trade a max deal in order to stay flexible under the new cba. Hitting the second apron is almost a de-facto hard cap so in fantasy land Jeff talks about an MPJ trade scenario.
