- 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 deal with. Their three two-way gamers (Trey Alexander, PJ Corridor and Spencer Jones) will all want new offers, DeAndre Jordan will most likely desire a fourth consecutive minimal wage, Dario Saric additionally has a participant choice that he must be anticipated to train, and Vlatko Cancar’s sheer endurance may properly see him get a sixth season. He by no means a lot performed, however then, he never did.
Of the rotation gamers, solely Westbrook would possibly enter free company this season, if he declines his participant choice for the minimal wage. And he would possibly. Coming into the ultimate levels of his enigmatic profession, Westbrook – who at one level in his profession appeared contemporary out of suitors – had a reasonably 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 isn’t any one else fairly like Russ.
Westbrook’s whirlwind, dynamic, brave-to-the-point-of-reckless fashion of play is well-documented, and won’t change now. Nor, it appears, does he want it to. He’s self-aware, unrepentant and very proficient, in a approach hardly ever earlier than seen, and the occasional second of chaos is the worth of getting what Nuggets President Josh Kroenke calls Westbrook’s “spice“. Basketball at all times requires a sure degree of chaos, each to present the defenses one thing surprising to deal with and to present the followers one thing to look at; Westbrook, unmistakably, is that. He provides qualities to the Nuggets if not a substantial amount of surety.
For the minimal wage, warts and all, they won’t do higher. Cagier, sure. Higher, no.
