The NBA offseason is far from over as we won’t see teams back for training camp and preseason for months. But the bulk of the transactions and roster turnover appear to be in the rearview and most teams are coming together and we are starting to get a good idea of what they will look like next season.

Many in the NBA media world are acting accordingly and reviewing and grading offseasons for different teams around the league. Much has been made about the offseason for the Denver Nuggets and how they’ve reshuffled some of the pieces around their stars Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, and Michael Porter Jr. while saving some money and flexibility for the future.

The general sentiment around their moves has been pretty lukewarm with some spinning the strategy into a positive, while others are less enthused. A pair of very outspoken critics come in the form of Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux, hosts of the Dunc’d On Basketball NBA Podcast. 

Both Duncan and Leroux were critical of the Nuggets, disagreeing with letting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk, using three 2nd-round picks to dump Reggie Jackson’s salary, using their full TP MLE on Dario Saric, and even bringing back DeAndre Jordan instead of Justin Holiday.

It was a pretty extensive teardown of the Nuggets and their path this offseason and the crux of all their points came back to cheap ownership. They both felt that the Denver ownership group cut corners to save money and avoid big tax bills despite having Nikola Jokic in his prime.

They both think the team got distinctly worse and that ownership has essentially used the new CBA and second apron as a crutch and an excuse to avoid paying top dollar to build the best possible team around their franchise player.

Duncan was the more generous critique, giving the Nuggets a D- for their offseason. Which is only generous in comparison to his partner Leroux who termed it as ‘a straight F’ for a grade. This definitely seems harsh, but it’s hard to deny the opportunity and window the Nuggets have to win titles around Jokic and it doesn’t seem like the team is doing all that they can.

Ultimately, we’ll see how it plays out, but it’s safe to say there are smart people around the league who think the Nuggets are not doing right by their fans and their superstar.