After leaving a roster spot open for the first eight months of the NBA calendar year, the Nuggets finally have their 15th man.

Denver is signing point guard Tyus Jones to a minimum deal for the rest of this season, a league source told The Denver Post on Monday, confirming a report by ESPN’s Shams Charania. The Mavericks waived Jones on Saturday, clearing a path for him to be playoff-eligible with a new team.

The Nuggets are hoping he can provide ball-handling depth, shooting and a veteran IQ to help them through the regular season in a tight Western Conference race for playoff seeding. With a loss to the Timberwolves on Sunday, Denver fell to fifth place in the standings for the first time since last Nov. 2, a week into the season.

Jones, 29, changed teams twice before the trade deadline in February. He started the season in Orlando, where he signed a one-year, $7 million contract last July. The Magic sacrificed two future second-round picks to trade him to Charlotte in a salary-shedding move on Feb. 4. The next day, the Hornets flipped him for Malaki Branham. Jones ended up in Dallas as part of a three-team trade that sent Anthony Davis to Washington.

The Nuggets were prioritizing forward depth on the buyout market in recent days, sources told The Post, but ball-handling was a key attribute team officials had circled in addition to size and versatility on the wing. They were unable to land two targets who checked both of those boxes. Kyle Anderson chose to reunite with Minnesota after his contract was bought out by Memphis. Khris Middleton — who was also acquired by the Mavericks in the Davis trade — opted to stay put in Dallas for the rest of the season.

Overall, the buyout market didn’t turn out to be robust at the forward positions this year, so the Nuggets pivoted Monday to Jones, who’s been a low-mistake table setter in the NBA for more than a decade. He has a 5.5 career assist-to-turnover ratio, including the single-season record of 7.29 (minimum 100 assists) in 2023-24 with the Wizards. He and Denver backup center Jonas Valanciunas were teammates in Memphis for two years.

The Nuggets will be his sixth team in the last four seasons, not including Charlotte. Jones started 58 games for the Suns on a veteran minimum contract last year, but he lost his spot in their lineup late in the season as Phoenix regressed from sixth to 11th place in the West. An undersized guard at 6 feet, his defensive ability has always been a weakness.

Jones came into this season with back-to-back campaigns as a 41% outside shooter, but his efficiency as a scorer tailed off dramatically in Orlando. He’s averaging career lows in points per game (3.1), field goal percentage (34.9%) and 3-point percentage (28.1%) in 56 games between the Mavs and Magic.

In Denver, he joins Jalen Pickett and Bruce Brown as reserve point guard options behind Jamal Murray. The Nuggets have struggled at times to bring the ball up against full-court pressure, and as they approach the last 20 games of the regular season, they’re trying to balance dueling objectives — improve their playoff seed without overworking their star players, Murray and Nikola Jokic.

Jones isn’t expected to be a high-minutes contributor, but he might be able to help them accomplish those goals while also providing one more option at the end of the bench when the playoffs arrive.

He will be the team’s last roster move of the season. In total, Denver turned Hunter Tyson and a 2032 second-round pick into Tyus Jones, playoff eligibility for Spencer Jones, two-way guard KJ Simpson, a 2026 second-round pick and luxury tax savings for ownership.

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