Has a $3,468,960 participant possibility
One good factor for the Nuggets heading into this offseason is that they’ll have little free company to take care of. Their three two-way gamers (Trey Alexander, PJ Corridor and Spencer Jones) will all want new offers, DeAndre Jordan will most likely desire a fourth consecutive minimal wage, Dario Saric additionally has a participant possibility that he needs to be anticipated to train, and Vlatko Cancar’s sheer endurance may nicely see him get a sixth season. He by no means a lot performed, however then, he by no means did.
Of the rotation gamers, solely Westbrook may enter free company this season, if he declines his participant possibility for the minimal wage. And he may. Getting into the ultimate levels of his enigmatic profession, Westbrook – who at one level in his profession seemed contemporary out of suitors – had a reasonably good consolidation season. In 75 common season video games with 36 begins, he averaged 13.3 factors, 6.1 assists and 4.9 rebounds per sport, inevitably down from his triple-double heyday but nonetheless a ton of manufacturing from a person who turns 37 in November. As ever, there isn’t any one else fairly like Russ.
Westbrook’s whirlwind, dynamic, brave-to-the-point-of-reckless type of play is well-documented, and won’t change now. Nor, it appears, does he need it to. He’s self-aware, unrepentant and intensely proficient, in a manner hardly ever earlier than seen, and the occasional second of chaos is the value of getting what Nuggets President Josh Kroenke calls Westbrook’s “spice“. Basketball at all times requires a sure stage of chaos, each to offer the defenses one thing surprising to take care of and to offer the followers one thing to observe; Westbrook, unmistakably, is that. He provides qualities to the Nuggets if not an excessive amount of surety.
For the minimal wage, warts and all, they won’t do higher. Cagier, sure. Higher, no.
