Which is ironic, considering how many ankles he\u2019s been breaking this month.<\/a><\/p>\nAnd the hoops wonks on the Grading The Week team are wondering if Nuggets management is kicking itself on a nightly basis for not giving Watson an extension before the start of the season.<\/p>\n
With only a few months left on his four-year rookie deal, Watson doesn\u2019t just look like the best bargain in the NBA right now. He might be one of the top free agents on the open market next summer. If the Nuggets let him get away.<\/p>\n
And with the kind of potential and ceiling he\u2019s been flashing, they might have to. As a restricted free agent, the Nuggets will have a hard time matching a \u201cmax\u201d contract offer from another club. If Watson keeps playing the way he did this past Thursday night, somebody might be rolling the Brink\u2019s truck the young man\u2019s way.<\/p>\n
January\u2019s been good to P-Swat, but not nearly as good as he\u2019s been for Denver\u2019s January. The athletic wing dropped a career-high 35 points on Washington a few nights ago in a 107-97 Nuggets road victory.<\/p>\n
The high-flying, 6-foot-8 Watson has been a two-way threat and shot-blocking\/rim-protecting specialist from Day 1 as a Nugget. A \u201crole\u201d dude. Only for the last three or four weeks, that role is turning into \u201csuperstar.\u201d Now that Watson\u2019s added a more consistent shooting touch to his game, he\u2019s added a piece of history to the back of his basketball trading card as well.<\/p>\n
In addition to his 35-point outburst, the former UCLA star is now the first player in NBA history to ever post a single-game stat line of 35 points, eight rebounds, four blocks, two steals and six 3-point makes.<\/p>\n
Peyton Watson\u2019s week \u2014 A-minus<\/p>\n
Come to think of it, if there was ever a stat line that summed up Watson\u2019s ceiling, at least from a production standpoint, Thursday might have pretty well nailed it.<\/p>\n
It was Watson\u2019s fourth 30-point game this season alone. His previous career-high in scoring over his first three seasons in the NBA was 24 points.<\/p>\n
While the Nuggets as a whole may be hitting a wall \u2014 or scraping it, at least \u2014 since losing star center Nikola Jokic late last month, Watson has cowboyed up in a big way.<\/p>\n
Over three games from last Sunday through Thursday, Watson averaged 21.3 points (second on the squad only to Jamal Murray\u2019s 22.7), 3.3 3-point makes, 5.7 boards, two assists, two steals and 2.7 blocks.<\/p>\n
In the 13 games since the loss of Jokic, Watson averaged 23.1 points, 6.3 rebounds, 1.4 steals and 1.3 blocks. With the Big Honey reportedly on the way back as soon, maybe as soon as Tuesday, it\u2019ll be fascinating to see how Watson\u2019s juice carries over with the big player on the planet back in Nuggets blue. And whether or not it changes the minds of the Kroenkes when it comes to keeping the 23-year-old California native around as a \u201ccore piece\u201d of the Jokic Era puzzle.<\/p>\n
Ceal Barry recognition day in Boulder \u2014 A<\/p>\n
While the GTW crew is, to be honest, more than a little worried about the state of some of our local men\u2019s college basketball teams lately, at least the women\u2019s hoops squads are more than picking up the pace. CSU was 16-4 going into a Saturday tilt at Fresno State; UNC is on a 20-win pace, and CU beat Iowa State, which sat at No. 32 in the NCAA\u2019s Net rankings as of late last Friday night, back on January 14. Most of the Grades staff is going to be tied up on Sunday, for obvious reasons, but we\u2019re going to try to keep one eye on the Buffs\u2019 contest against Oklahoma State that day anyway. Because before the game, CU will dedicate \u201cCeal Barry Plaza,\u201d named for legendary ex-Buffs women\u2019s basketball coach Ceal Barry, outside the Events Center. As BoCo legacies go, a permanent tribute to Barry isn\u2019t just deserved. It\u2019s overdue.<\/p>\n
Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver\u2019s teams.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peyton Watson? More like Pay The Watson. The Nuggets\u2019 fourth-year wing was held out of Friday night\u2019s visit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,7948,319,217,325,24812,24814,24815,301,187,3943,14011,3636,3734,762,165,252,6,231,253,302,4097,310,1146,4098,1602,66,198,3166,76229,5747,682],"class_list":["post-558555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denver-nuggets","tag-basketball","tag-boulder","tag-college","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-csu","tag-cu-buffs","tag-cu-buffs-basketball","tag-denver","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-denvernuggets","tag-grading-the-week","tag-injuries","tag-iowa","tag-jamal-murray","tag-latest-headlines","tag-more-nuggets-news","tag-nba","tag-ncaa","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-nuggets","tag-nuggets-takes","tag-oklahoma","tag-peyton-watson","tag-sean-keeler","tag-shooting","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-summer","tag-the-open","tag-ucla","tag-washington"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115952242208221250","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}