The Denver Nuggets saved some money and got Spencer Jones onto their roster on Thursday by sending away Hunter Tyson to Brooklyn, just ahead of the NBA Trade Deadline.
Denver traded Tyson and a 2032 second-round pick to the Brooklyn Nets for the less favorable of the Clippers’ or Hawks’ 2026 second-round picks, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported. The move drops the Nuggets below the luxury tax line, opens a roster spot and gives them an additional selection in this spring’s draft.
The Nuggets will convert swingman Spencer Jones from a two-way contract to a standard deal, Chris Haynes reported. The second-year forward has averaged 6 points and 3.1 rebounds while starting 34 games this season, with Cameron Johnson and Christian Braun missing time due to injuries. Though Jones himself was injured in Wednesday’s loss to the Knicks, suffering a concussion after a collision with Karl-Anthony Towns. Jones may be even more heavily relied on down the stretch as well since the Nuggets lost Peyton Watson to a leg injury in that game as well.
Denver now sits $1.8 million below the tax with two roster spots open, per ESPN’s Bobby Marks. A veteran minimum deal currently costs $884,000.
According to The Denver Post’s Bennett Durando, the Nuggets want to enter the playoffs with all 15 roster spots filled while staying under the tax. One path forward: sign Jones to a $1.2 million deal using the mid-level exception (MLE) now, then add a buyout market player to a minimum deal on March 1 and remain roughly $35,000 under the threshold. If the Nuggets use the MLE on Jones, they could give him a multi-year deal.
Tyson, the 37th overall pick in 2023, struggled to crack Denver’s rotation over three seasons. The 6-foot-8 stretch forward from Clemson played just 162 minutes across 21 appearances this year, starting two games during an injury-ravaged stretch. Opportunities materialized this year because of injuries, but Tyson still couldn’t stick on the floor. His Nuggets legacy will be a standout Summer League performance just after he was drafted.
Shipping out Tyson also puts an end to one of Calvin Booth’s worst decisions; funny enough it took a second-round pick to do it. Had the Nuggets had more of the second-round picks that Booth loved to trade, perhaps they could have gotten a useful player back for Zeke Nnaji in a trade, another one of Booth’s mistakes.
The trade marks the second swap between Denver and Brooklyn in recent months, after last offseason’s deal that sent Michael Porter Jr. to the Nets for Johnson.
The Nuggets will have a first-round pick this spring and a mid or late-round second-rounder. Many believe this is a very good draft. They could not trade their first-round pick on Thursday. If they want to, they can ship it out on draft night. Then the goal will be to extend restricted free agent Watson, who was impacted by deadline dealings. A lot of teams used cap space to make their moves, leaving the Los Angeles Lakers as the lone team as of today that can offer a max deal this summer.
So the Nuggets’ big move is to duck the luxury tax, which will bother some. They could’ve signed Jones and just gone deeper into the tax, but that’s not how things work at Kroenke Sports and Entertainment. Given the self-imposed limitations, sending away a useless player at the cost of a second-round exchange to get a player who you know already works on your roster, playoff-eligible, is a decent deadline day for Denver. Now the question becomes who do they complete the roster with, and will that move have to be reactionary to the bevy of injuries the team has faced?
