Report: Nuggets make priority for offseason clear

The Denver Nuggets’ first major decision of the offseason has come into focus, and it centers on the player who never even saw the floor in the team’s first-round flameout to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Retaining restricted free agent Peyton Watson is the Nuggets’ top offseason priority, according to a report from NBA reporter Jake Fischer.

Watson, 23, just finished his fourth NBA season — and his most productive yet. The 6-foot-7 wing averaged a career-high 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 0.9 steals and 1.1 blocks per game while shooting 49.1% from the field and 41.1% from 3-point range across 54 games. He started 40 of those before a right hamstring strain ended his season ahead of the playoffs.

His absence in the postseason was costly. The Nuggets’ rotation thinned considerably with Watson and Aaron Gordon both sidelined for stretches of the series, and Denver’s depth, especially with the lack of power forwards, got exposed in a six-game loss to a Timberwolves team missing several rotation players of its own.

Watson’s value around the league has only grown. According to a report from a few weeks ago from from Fischer’s colleague Marc Stein, the Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls and Brooklyn Nets have been identified as potential suitors with the spending power to present an offer sheet that “causes angst in the Rocky Mountains.” Both the Lakers and Bulls registered trade interest in Watson leading up to the Feb. 5 trade deadline, per the report — though Chicago’s front office is now in transition.

As a restricted free agent, Watson can sign an offer sheet with another team, but the Nuggets retain the right to match. Whether Denver is willing to push deeper into the luxury tax is one of the biggest questions of the team’s offseason and about the team’s owners.

Watson, the No. 30 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, has been one of the few young success stories from the post-Tim Connelly draft era in Denver. Locking him in long term — at the right number — is now Job No. 1 for a front office staring down a long summer of decisions. Well aside from the Nikola Jokic extension, which feels like a formality.

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