While much remains to be revealed about the tentative labor agreement the owners and the players agreed to, the Denver Nuggets are likely to be big winners once free agency starts on its reported Dec. 9 date. The Nuggets lost restricted free agent Wilson Chandler and free agents J.R. Smith and Kenyon Martin to China. Center Nene will hit the free agent market and could find a new home elsewhere.
The Nuggets are going to have plenty of cap space to work with once free agency starts and it will be interesting to see how the team follows up with all that space to used up. Henry Abbott over at ESPN.com writes that the Nuggets are winners in all of this:
Remember when the Heat had all that cap room to sign free agents? The Nuggets are basically like that, only now all kinds of teams will be on a course to shed payroll. There’s not a system in the world in which you can’t parlay tiny roster commitments into potential.
Though the question remains, will Josh Kroenke and Masai Ujiri be able to maximize the most out of this new labor deal?
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