{"id":767843,"date":"2026-06-22T19:30:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/767843\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T19:30:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:30:21","slug":"who-should-nuggets-trade-up-for-in-draft-for-cameron-carr-koa-peat-dailyn-swain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/767843\/","title":{"rendered":"Who should Nuggets trade up for in draft for Cameron Carr? Koa Peat? Dailyn Swain?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Troy Renck: There is no Calvin Booth to kick around.<\/a> Maybe the former general manager can mock us with mock drafts instead of his real ones. The first round of the NBA Draft arrives on Tuesday night and rumors continue to swirl that the Nuggets are interested in moving up from the 26th pick overall.<\/a> The capitulation elimination by the Timberwolves<\/a> exposed serious holes in the Nuggets\u2019 roster. They need better ball-handling and defenders capable of switching and slowing the E-470 toll road to the rim. When looking at the options, who should the Nuggets consider dealing up to land?<\/p>\n

Sean Keeler: Baby, you should drive that Carr. In a perfect world, you\u2019re not just re-signing Peyton Watson this summer. You\u2019re sticking his profile into the 3-D printer and adding clones of him. And of those clones, Cameron Carr of Baylor is the one worth dealing for, on paper. He\u2019s a 6-foot-5 wing with a 7-foot-long wingspan. He\u2019s got a 42-inch vertical leap. He features a high release point and a quick trigger. He\u2019s got the quicks to close and the length to guard spots 1-4 on the floor. Even better, he\u2019s 21, with seven or eight peak seasons still ahead of him. If you want someone who won\u2019t back down whenever Jaden McDaniels, Ayo Dosunmu, Terrence Shannon Jr. and Anthony Edwards are hunting the HOV lane to the rim<\/a>, Carr\u2019s your guy.<\/p>\n

Renck: Talking with our Nuggets expert Bennett Durando<\/a>, the realistic targets for a deal start at 14 or 18 with the Charlotte Hornets and likely end with the Raptors (19) and Pistons (21). These are teams who want to become serious contenders after dipping their toes in the playoff waters last season. Would the Nuggets hit the reset button and ship Gordon to the Hornets for Carr or Texas\u2019 Dailyn Swain? Or could they land Swain or Arizona rugged forward Koa Peat by inching up the ladder a few picks? Swain is a versatile defender who can get to the rim. He must improve as a shooter. Same goes for Peat. But Peat projects as an alley-oop replacement for Gordon, fitting perfectly with a space-creating center like Nikola Jokic<\/a>. He would also add a layer of toughness needed on the boards and at the rim.<\/p>\n

Keeler: Got to admit \u2014 I do like the idea of re-Peating with a younger Aaron Gordon playalike. I remember coming away impressed by what Peat did in Boulder a few months back (12-for-15 shooting from the floor) against CU. Downside? He doesn\u2019t \u2014 at least, not right now, at any rate \u2014 have AG\u2019s shooting touch, and it sounds as if teams will be perfectly content to leave him open anywhere past about 9 feet away from the rim. He also doesn\u2019t have AG\u2019s hops, mind you. Although it\u2019s fair to wonder if AG at present has AG\u2019s old hops, too<\/p>\n

Renck: It is my belief that the Nuggets must go backward to compete with the league\u2019s upper crust again. Trading Cam Johnson or Aaron Gordon \u2014 or both \u2014 makes sense to keep Peyton Watson. If a team wants to take Christian Braun\u2019s contract, fine. But no salary dumps. The Nuggets need draft capital to maximize their reinvention over the next few years. They must hit on the first round. DaRon Holmes II has been a ghost since being drafted due to injury and ineffectiveness. As long as Jokic is on the Nuggets, they are a postseason team. But how they play in the postseason will depend largely on the drafts the next two seasons. It is worth moving someone to move up.<\/p>\n

Keeler: Said it before, gonna say it again: You need more P-Swats on this roster, not fewer. While his contract is a beast to move, Jamal Murray\u2019s trade value might never get any higher than it is right now, given a spate of (relatively) good health. Nuggets Nation has wanted the Zeke Nnaji contract moved for what feels like a decade now \u2014 but I\u2019d imagine that trading up to the 12-16 sweet spot of the first round will require a much bigger piece on the table than our man Zeke, sadly. And a much bigger swing on the part of the three-headed monster that is Josh Kroenke, Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer. But that said, Carr\u2019s upside is more than worth it. The Nuggets could do a lot worse than the second coming of Devin Vassell or Trey Murphy III. If you\u2019ve only got one more chance to remake your core around the Joker, why not go wild?<\/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":"Troy Renck: There is no Calvin Booth to kick around. Maybe the former general manager can mock us…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[877,375,382,7,7948,4187,1828,684,561,765,2288,301,187,3943,41856,762,24313,3787,165,152,252,6,12,253,302,4097,179,1146,4098,8869,66,198,2098,409,3788,8870,4714],"class_list":["post-767843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denver-nuggets","tag-aaron-gordon","tag-anthony-edwards","tag-arizona","tag-basketball","tag-boulder","tag-calvin-booth","tag-cam-johnson","tag-charlotte","tag-christian-braun","tag-colorado","tag-daron-holmes","tag-denver","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-denvernuggets","tag-e-470","tag-jamal-murray","tag-jon-wallace","tag-josh-kroenke","tag-latest-headlines","tag-minnesota-timberwolves","tag-more-nuggets-news","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-nuggets","tag-nuggets-takes","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-peyton-watson","tag-sean-keeler","tag-sean-keeler-versus","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-texas","tag-trade","tag-troy-renck","tag-troy-renck-versus","tag-zeke-nnaji"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767843","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=767843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}