Westbrook traded, expected to be cut and sign with Nuggets

With heavy suggestion from three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, the Denver Nuggets will soon add former MVP Russell Westbrook thanks to a trade that sent the guard from the Los Angeles Clippers to the Utah Jazz. The expectation is that Westbrook will be cut by the Jazz and Denver will sign him on the open market once he clears waivers, according to ESPN.

The Clippers sent Westbrook, a second-round pick swap and cash to the Jazz in a sign-and-trade agreement for guard Kris Dunn. Westbrook will be cut by the Jazz for the second time in two years, as they were the team that orchestrated his exit from the Los Angeles Lakers, clearing him to sign with the Clippers and Reggie Jackson to be a Nugget. Meanwhile, Dunn is a nice defensive addition for the Clippers, who are having an offseason of movement with Paul George leaving town. And the Jazz get some assets as they work on their rebuild for the cost of doing business.

This strange sequence of events sees the Nuggets as not the first recent champion to lose Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and add Westbrook the same summer. Nor will the Nuggets be the first to pick Westbrook over Jackson. Calvin Booth will hope that unlike the  Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder who made those transactions in the past, that this move for Westbrook will be the outlier.

Westbrook was the 2016-17 MVP and is a nine-time All-NBA selection, with nine All-Star Game trips, two scoring titles and he has already been named to the NBA’s 75 best players of all time.

Westbrook opted into his $4 million contract with the Clippers earlier in the offseason but that seems to have come with the caveat that the sides would look for a trade. The Nuggets soon emerged as a suitor with later reports sharing that a lot of interest was driven by Jokic. Westbrook opted back in despite wanting out because in the NBA it’s sometimes easier to find a new home while keeping a few extra bucks via trade rather than hitting the market outright. This seems to be the case with this circumstance where the Nuggets are heavily limited in free agency by being in the luxury tax but could’ve maneuvered a trade using several mechanisms for Westbrook. When Westbrook signs, the Nuggets roster will be full.

The 35-year-old UCLA Bruin has been in the league for 16 years and has bounced between five franchises, with his most legendary stint coming for the Oklahoma City Thunder. It’s for the Nuggets division rival that Westbrook won the NBA MVP and hit a famous buzzer-beater in Denver three to cap the first of his four unreal triple-double averaging seasons. But that was a rare deep shot for Westbrook who is one of 269 players to attempt 2,000 threes in his career and his percentage is 268th. Those shooting issues have really come to light as Brodie’s athleticism has declined. As told by his more recent playoff failures and his bouncing around the league a bit.

Westbrook’s lone trip to the NBA Finals coming in his fourth season all the way back in 2012. Since blowing a 3-1 lead in the Western Conference Finals to the 2016 Warriors, Westbrook’s teams have gone 1-7 in playoff series with the lone win coming in a bubble series where the guard missed four games and they were subsequently gentlemanly swept by the Lakers. After 11 seasons in OKC, he was thought to be a solution for James Harden in Houston and LeBron James in Los Angeles.

In going to the Lakers, Los Angeles split up their recent champion team that had beaten Westbrook’s Rockets and to do they sent out Caldwell-Pope. The trade was such a failure that the Lakers missed the playoffs and Westbrook would end up being bought out.

It’s that final move that ended with Westbrook going across town to the star-studded Clippers, where he changed roles into strong bench player. It’s this transaction that led the Nuggets to acquire Reggie Jackson as the Clippers moved off that veteran guard to open up space for Westbrook. And that’s not the first time Jackson and Westbrook crossed paths. Jackson was drafted by the Thunder where Westbrook starred and the two famously beefed there, forcing the backup point Jackson to be shipped to Detroit away from the team’s star. At the time, a much younger Jackson was adamant about being a starter in the NBA—something he would easily prove to be with the Pistons.

Last season Westbrook played in 68 games, starting 11, and he averaged 22.5 minutes, 11.1 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.5 assists a night. He shot just 27% from three but still puts a lot of pressure on the rim and is a decent defender at 6-foot-4 thanks to his high motor.

Westbrook will now take Jackson’s role in Denver a the primary backup point guard behind Jamal Murray. Jackson played all 82 regular season games last season, including 23 starts when Murray was hurt. He averaged 10.2 points per game and 3.8 assists while shooting 36% from deep. Jackson was salary dumped to Charlotte for the second time in three seasons along with three second rounds during the NBA Draft earlier in the summer.

2023-24 Russell Westbrook

18.3 PTS, 8.3 REB, 7.4 AST, 3.5 TOV, 1.8 STL, 0.6 BLK per 75 poss, -6.6 rTS%, +0.7 HNPM, +1.9 NetRtg (-4.0 swing)

2023-24 Reggie Jackson

17.0 PTS, 3.2 REB, 6.3 AST, 2.2 TOV, 0.9 STL, 0.3 BLK per 75 poss, -5.9 rTS%, -2.4 HNPM, +1.4 NetRtg (-8.4 swing) https://t.co/bPJRvMCtmp

— Andy Bailey (@AndrewDBailey) July 18, 2024

Maybe most concerning now is that the Nuggets only have one true shooter in Michael Porter Jr., dumping their third and fifth-most deep-ball shooting players for one of the worst high-volume three-point shooters in the league and a big. And the Nuggets had already taken the third-fewest from behind the arc a season ago. They’ll rely heavily on MPJ, Julian Strawther and Dario Saric to space the floor for the paint-dependent Westbrook.

The Nuggets offseason is more or less done unless they decide to cut struggling second-year player Jalen Pickett. Denver will use internal candidates like Strawther and Christian Braunand to replace Caldwell-Pope, who signed with the Magic. The team will likely start Braun along their core four with Westbrook as the sixth man.

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