Why the Nuggets should consider bringing Danilo Gallinari home in free agency
Has a grocery store ever been used as part of a free-agent recruiting pitch?
If the Nuggets were to consider a reunion with forward Danilo Gallinari, that might just be the place to start.
Back in 2017, as he entered unrestricted free agency for the first time in his NBA career, Gallinari spoke about the reasons it would be hard to leave Denver. It was the place where he had grown up in the league. He arrived in the Carmelo Anthony trade in 2011, memorably scoring 30 points in his second game with the Nuggets. After helping guide Denver to a franchise-record 57 wins in the 2012-13 season, Gallinari battled through a knee injury and then played through the lean years of the Brian Shaw era.
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But as the 2016-17 season under his new coach, Michael Malone, ended one game shy of the playoffs, Gallinari could tell the organization was headed in the right direction. The idea of being a part of that rise was enticing.
More than anything, though, Gallinari had made Denver home. That wasn’t something he took lightly.
“It’s tough for me to leave Denver,” he said at the time, a couple of months before he ultimately decided to sign with the Clippers. “This is my city. I love the city. I have a house here. After my career is over, Denver is going to be my city. It’s very tough for me to leave. You live in the same city for six, seven years and you have your friends, you have your house and you have the place where you go for groceries. You have all these things that make your life easier. All those things make Denver a very enjoyable city.”
Gallinari, of course, is concerned with more than the produce aisle now that he is a free agent once again, mapping out the final years of his basketball career. He said in a recent interview with an Italian media outlet that his next decision is also about far more than money. At 32 years old and without a postseason series victory to his name, Gallinari insists that chasing the ring is the thing now.
“I’m not 20 anymore,” he said in that interview, according to a translation by Sportando.
It’s never too late to go home again.
If Gallinari is going to live in Denver once his career his over, why not settle in now?
The offseason for the Nuggets featured fans pinning for some big names: Jrue Holiday. (Traded to Milwaukee.) Bradley Beal. (Probably not going anywhere.) Victor Oladipo (Who knows?)
Those are the same names that have been talked about with varying intensities since last season, names that heated up at the trade deadline in February. But the odds suggest a blockbuster trade isn’t coming for the Nuggets. That has rarely been a part of the organization’s blueprint when it comes to building a roster that has sprouted organically to create one of the league’s best and most exciting acts.
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The journey the Nuggets made to the Western Conference Finals in the late summer revealed, once and for all, that Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray are a capable enough star duo to compete for a championship. Seismic shifts aren’t the play here. Continuity is Denver’s brand, worn like a badge of honor. It is a method that has been refreshing in the age of quick pulls of the ripcord. It has also been inarguably effective, with internal development and top-flight chemistry at the center of Denver’s year-over-year rise the past five seasons.
That’s why Gallinari could be a best-of-both-worlds singing for the Nuggets when free agency opens later this week. He’s a veteran player — one still training in Denver during the offseason, by the way — who is looking for a contender and who just so happens to provide the things the contender with which he is most familiar could really use.
🏋️♂️ Up and down, gym day!!#Training
📍 Denver@SteveHess1 pic.twitter.com/LmMUfElflF
— DANILO GALLINARI (@gallinari8888) November 9, 2020
Gallinari is a bonafide scorer who has averaged 19.3 points per game over the past two seasons and shot 41.8 percent from 3-point range in that span. The Nuggets were searching at various points last season for a reliable third scorer and consistent shot-making from the outside. Here’s another thing the Nuggets didn’t do well during the regular season or in the playoffs: Get to the free throw line. It may seem trivial, but Denver’s rate of .235 free throw attempts for every one field goal attempt was the fifth lowest in the league. The Nuggets were only slightly better in the playoffs with a .260 rate that ranked 12th out of 16 postseason teams.
Gallinari has long been an expert in getting himself to the line. His .365 free throw rate last season was higher than that of any qualifying Nuggets player.
Most importantly, Gallinari knows the organization, has played with its two stars and helped launch Jokic-ball into existence back in 2017, when the Nuggets produced the NBA’s best offense in the second half of that season. There were never bridges burned when Gallinari left Denver more than three years ago. Even after signing Paul Millsap that summer, the Nuggets pursued Gallinari hard. When it was clear the two parties weren’t going to reach a deal, the Nuggets helped facilitate a sign-and-trade that got Gallo to his preferred destination: the Los Angeles Clippers.
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There are plenty of reasons why a reunion between Gallinari and the Nuggets wouldn’t happen. If Will Barton makes a healthy return to the start of next season and the Nuggets are ready to insert Michael Porter Jr. into a more pronounced role, then another lengthy wing player could seem like a redundancy. If Denver is successful in its quest to re-sign Jerami Grant and install him at the starting power forward spot, which Gallinari played the majority of the time in Oklahoma City last season, the frontcourt could quickly be too crowded for another high-usage addition. And that’s to say nothing of Bol Bol, the 2019 second-round pick who demonstrated in the bubble that he might be closer to contributing than previously anticipated.
And all of that is before we talk about how the Nuggets view Wednesday’s NBA draft as an avenue to add a key piece to their roster.
Then there’s the matter of the financials. The Nuggets have the mid-level exception at their disposal, which could be roughly $9.5 million per season. Is that enough for a player who signed a three-year, $65 million sign-and-trade deal when he left Denver for the Clippers in 2017? Even an MLE-type deal could be hard for the Nuggets to conjure if they decide to use all their room under the luxury tax threshold to bring back veterans Millsap and Mason Plumlee, in addition to Grant.
That scenario for how the Nuggets operated this offseason would hardly be surprising: Sign Millsap and Plumlee on smaller, short-term deals, reach a multi-year extension with Grant and count on sizable leaps from Porter and Bol as the team’s biggest offseason “additions.” That would be in line with how the Nuggets have operated to reach the ground they stand on now.
Perhaps that’s what makes Gallinari intriguing. He was part of the start of all this. Much has been made during the rise of these Nuggets about Dec. 15, 2016. It’s become an almost religious day of celebration for fans who remember that on that day, coach Michael Malone made Jokic his starting center, paving the way for one of the NBA’s unlikeliest superstars to find his footing.
But part of what came next — the Nuggets producing the league’s top-rated offense over the season’s final four months — was due to Gallinari’s like-a-glove-fit into what the offense was doing as it revolved around its new central planetary force. Consider this: Jokic has had eight different teammates with whom he has shared the court for at least 900 minutes in a season. None of those duos have produced a better net rating than Jokic and Gallinari did during the 2016-17 season. The Nuggets were 9.2 points per 100 possessions better than their opponents that season when those two shared the floor, and that net rating jumped to 10.3 after the lineup change that put Jokic at center.
There are plenty of reasons why a Gallinari reunion with the Nuggets won’t work. Maybe that’s one reason it should.
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It’s at least something to chew on. Like a tasty sample at your favorite grocery store.
(Photo: Kim Klement-Pool/Getty Images)
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