Last night Yahoo Sports Adrian Wojnarowski revealed the Denver Nuggets are close to re-signing Forward Danilo Gallinari. The deal will reportedly be worth $34 Million over two seasons. A contract that is just absurd for a player like Gallinari. The 26-year old Italian, Gallinari, is a very solid performer, and has been since he joined the league seven years ago. But those solid performances don’t come around as often as Denver Nuggets fans would like. Danilo Gallinari is one of the most injury prone athletes, not just in the NBA, but in the whole of American Sports. Gallinari played 59 games last season, starting just 27 of those games, and has played only 173 total games the last four seasons, and missed 139 games in the process.
Danilo Gallinari averaged 12.4 PPG, 3.7 Rebounds per game and 1.4 Assists per game. These to me at least are not the number of a player deserving of such a large deal. Gallinari is not a guaranteed starter and he is set to earn $14 Million this year and $15.5 Million the next. Astronomical numbers for a player who could do more watching than playing next season.
The Nuggets made what I thought was their first good decision of the rebuilding process a couple days ago when they traded Point Guard Ty Lawson to the Rockets, but if they were to re-sign forward Danilo Gallinari, they would definitely be taking another step back. If the Nuggets are smart and want to become a better team, they should realistically trade Ty Lawson…Tick. Trade Danilo Gallinari and also consider trading power forward Kenneth Faried. If you’re going to rebuild then in my opinion don’t do it half-heartedly.
Realistically the Denver Nuggets starting line-up should look like this below. This starting line-up cost between $21 and $21.9 Million in cap space. Now if the Nuggets keep Ty Lawson (bit late but stick with me) Danilo Gallinari and Kenneth Faried and put them in as starters that goes all the way up to $47 Million in starting cap space roughly. Even if you add the entire bench to the young re-building line-up you still don’t get the number you have with the other three in the rotation, you still only reach $42.2 in cap space. This leads me to believe that if the Nuggets really want to improve by re-building, they have to do it properly. I really do believe re-signing Danilo Gallinari would be a big mistake.
Point Guard – Emmanuel Mudiay (19)
Shooting Guard – Gary Harris (20)
Small Forward – Wilson Chandler (28)
Power Forward – JJ Hickson (26) / Kostas Papanikolaou (24)
Center – Jusuf Nurkic (20)
