The Nuggets don’t have much margin for error when it comes to their cap sheet, and that’s what makes DaRon Holmes II’s team option look like a simple call.
Denver is already the only NBA team sitting above the second apron luxury tax penalty threshold this season, and the money doesn’t exactly clear up in a hurry. The club also has a lot of salary committed for 2027-28, which is why the front office has to think ahead instead of getting boxed in again.
That brings the focus to Holmes, whose 2027-28 team option is due by October 31st. After Denver’s first preseason game, the path seems pretty clear: he was not ahead of Zeke Nnaji on the depth chart, and he was clearly behind rookie second-round pick Trevon Brazile. With that in mind, the cleanest move is to decline the option, save the $5.5 million, and put that money toward someone who can actually help the rotation.
That $5.5 million matters. It’s enough to cover two veterans on minimum deals, and it gets Denver most of the way to a taxpayer mid-level exception, which is $6.5 million. That’s the same exception the Nuggets lost Tim Hardaway Jr. to when he signed with the Miami Heat.
Holmes came into the league as the 22nd overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft by the Phoenix Suns, and Denver saw enough to trade its own 28th pick plus three second-rounders to get him. At the time, that looked like a swing worth taking. Now, it reads as another costly misstep from former Nuggets GM Calvin Booth.
It’s also been a rough run for Holmes himself. His rookie season was wiped out after he tore his right Achilles tendon in his first Las Vegas Summer League game. He didn’t debut for Denver until last year, and outside of a handful of starts that didn’t produce much while Nikola Jokic was out, most of his minutes came in garbage time.
With Brazile already signed to a four-year, $9.3 million deal this summer and now sitting ahead of Holmes after one preseason game, the Nuggets have even less reason to keep paying for a player who doesn’t appear to have a role.
For Denver, this really does look like an easy decision. Decline the option, keep the $5.5 million, and move on.
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Nuggets Bench Wings Are Making Denvers Rotation Battle Harder To Ignore
The Nuggets second preseason win over Utah offered another look at a bench group that is starting to make the back end of the rotation feel a little less settled. Denver beat the Jazz 117-106, and the wing depth was a major part of why the game had a different feel than a typical exhibition tune-up. Alpha Diallo brought energy on both ends, Cam Whitmore flashed the kind of impact the Nuggets want to see from reserve wings, and the second unit again looked like it can change the tone of a game.
Julian Strawther, meanwhile, kept building on an encouraging start to the preseason after another productive outing. For a team trying to sort out roles before the games count, those performances matter because they are happening in the right places: on the wing, in lineups where defense, spacing and shot-making all carry extra weight. Denver still has more decisions to make, and the bench wings are making those calls harder to ignore. [Read more 🡒]
Bruce Brown's Knicks Deal Says A Lot About Denver's New Reality
Bruce Brown is back in the kind of summer roster squeeze that has become common around the league, this time with the Knicks, who have signed several players to Exhibit 9 training camp deals as they sort through a crowded field for limited openings. New York values Brown for the same reasons many teams once did: versatility, experience and the ability to plug holes in a rotation without needing much time to adjust.
For Denver fans, the more telling part is the backdrop around his market. Brown said the teams interested in him "weren't many," and pointed to the second-apron salary cap rule as a frequent explanation, a reminder of how much the leagues spending limits can shape even familiar names. The Nuggets had room to add a veteran, but Brown never became a serious target there, a quiet sign of how different the roster-building reality is now compared with the one that once made him such a fit in Denver. [Read more 🡒]
Nuggets Suddenly Have A Guard Battle Fans Didn't See Coming
The Nuggets are using the preseason the way most teams use it this time of year, as a live audition for the bench, and head coach David Adelman has made it clear he wants to sort through the group before the games start counting. Denver has several new pieces in the mix, including DeMar DeRozan, Marvin Bagley III and Alpha Diallo, while the backcourt depth chart is still being sorted out behind the main rotation.
What makes the situation interesting is the squeeze it creates for the players fighting for backup guard minutes. Tyus Jones, Julian Strawther and Spencer Jones are all in the conversation, but every preseason run is carrying more weight than usual as Adelman and his staff try to decide who fits and who may be the odd man out once the roster gets trimmed down over the course of the season. [Read more 🡒]