The market for Peyton Watson is starting to take shape, and the Nuggets’ asking price is doing most of the heavy lifting.
According to Jake Fischer of The Stein Line, the Clippers still have interest in Watson, and the Hawks have now shown “fresh” interest in the Nuggets’ restricted free agent forward. But interest alone won’t get this done. Watson is reportedly looking for a deal that pays more than $25MM annually, and for either L.A. or Atlanta to get there, a sign-and-trade would almost certainly have to be part of the equation.
That’s where Denver’s demands have become the real obstacle. Fischer reports that the Nuggets’ asking price has been too high for both teams to seriously entertain, with the front office believed to be seeking a package in the neighborhood of what the Jazz received from the Lakers for Walker Kessler: two first-round picks and two first-round swaps.
Utah also didn’t take back any salary in that deal, which matters here because Denver is navigating the tax aprons. If the Nuggets use Watson’s outgoing salary to bring money back, they’d be hard-capped at the second apron.
For the Clippers, there’s at least a theoretical path. Yossi Gozlan of The Third Apron previously laid out a scenario in which L.A. could fold a Watson sign-and-trade into its Kawhi Leonard trade with Toronto, using Leonard’s outgoing salary to get Watson to a starting salary of roughly $23.1MM. That Leonard deal is on hold for now, but it gives the Clippers time to keep kicking around the idea.
Atlanta’s route looks messier. Fischer says the Hawks don’t have trade exceptions or other pending moves they can realistically use to slot Watson into, which means they’d likely have to piece together outgoing salary with something like Corey Kispert and Buddy Hield. Even then, Denver probably wouldn’t have much appetite for taking either player back.
If the price stays where it is, the whole exercise may never get off the ground. Fischer says that in that case, the Clippers are expected to pivot toward re-signing their own restricted free agent, Bennedict Mathurin.
Brooklyn is the one team with enough cap room to throw Watson an offer sheet without needing a sign-and-trade, but Fischer reports the Nets haven’t been “keen” on pushing into the $25MM-plus range for the 23-year-old and don’t appear likely to chase him hard.
The Nets are still working through whether they can maximize their cap space before finalizing the Julius Randle trade with Minnesota, Chicago, and Charlotte, Fischer adds.
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