The Denver Nuggets Draft Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett And Hunter Tyson, Prioritizing Offense And Experience

By the time the curtains closed on last night’s NBA draft festivities, this year’s title-winning Denver Nuggets had added three new players to their roster, renewing a flow of incoming young talent they hope will help keep the team competitive as they continue to strive for more bites at the championship apple.

With the 29th pick in the first round, Denver selected Julian Strawther, a wing out of Gonzaga known for his efficient shot-making. In the second round, the Nuggets added heady Penn State point guard Jalen Pickett and sharpshooting Clemson forward Hunter Tyson with picks 32 and 37, respectively.

In actuality, the Nuggets did not technically make the selections themselves. As the two pick trades they made leading up to the draft had not yet been officially completed, pick No. 37 was made by the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Nos. 29 and 32 by the Indiana Pacers, with both teams selecting on Denver’s behalf and subsequently trading over their draft rights. (For a fully detailed explanation of these two deals which resulted in Denver sending out their own 2029 first-round pick along with their 2023 pick No. 40, and ending up with three picks in this year’s draft, please see my Nuggets pre-draft article where I broke it all down.)

In the Nuggets’ acquisition last year of players from the 2022 draft class in Christian Braun (selected by Denver) as well as Peyton Watson and Ismael Kamagate (both acquired via trade), there was a clear and overriding theme which clearly emerged as the connective tissue of the archetype general manager Calvin Booth and his front office staff were targeting: players who could bolster Denver’s defense and size around their trio of maximum contract stars in Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. – none of whom were primarily known for their defensive prowess.

A different, but similarly unifying thematic through-line is identifiable in this year’s Nuggets draft as well, with Denver focusing on players with highly proficient offensive skill sets – most notably shooting – as well as a great deal of experience which should lend itself to NBA-readiness sooner rather than later.

As I also outlined in my pre-draft piece, due to the more harshly punitive luxury tax luxury tax restrictions in the NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), especially as they apply to teams which go over the “second apron,” or the higher tax threshold, the Nuggets are now under a great deal of pressure to fill the margins of their roster with players on relatively cheap contracts, and rookie contracts (which now also include exceptions for second-round picks) fit that bill.

But most rookies aren’t immediately ready to contribute to a championship contender. One notable exception, however, proved to be Christian Braun, who was a key contributor for the Nuggets in the playoffs, including the NBA Finals. And one factor which Denver clearly considers to play into Braun’s NBA-readiness was the fact he entered the league after three seasons in college.

Among the Nuggets’ new acquisitions, Strawther, like Braun, entered the draft as a junior after three seasons, while Pickett and Tyson both completed their senior years with a full five years of college basketball under their belts. Booth and his staff have unmistakably singled out prospects they believe have a good chance of fast-tracking to an NBA level of play and, they would presumably hope, potentially a spot in Denver’s rotation. And while signing free agents to veteran minimum deals is another option the Nuggets will certainly employ, the years of team control with rookie contracts better facilitate a more viable and durable continuity over multiple seasons.

As for the skills Denver’s new rookies bring to the table, offense was clearly Booth’s priority in this draft. While the Nuggets’ bench was able to establish a defensive identity, especially in the playoffs when head coach Michael Malone whittled down the reserve rotation to just three reserve players in Braun, Bruce Brown and Jeff Green, those units often struggled to score.

Both Strawther and Tyson made their marks in college first and foremost with their three-point shooting, and both project for that to carry over at the NBA level. Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer describes Strawther as “a high-volume flamethrower off the catch” who “does a good job of fluidly getting himself set for his shots” and has begun “pulling up from deep behind the arc.” To be more specific, The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie highlights the NBA three-point range of Strawther, who “made 42.1 percent of his 95 three-point attempts from beyond 25 feet, and “even made 36.4 percent of his 22 attempts beyond 27 feet,” adding that “his jumper will translate.”

Vecenie writes that he also buys Tyson as a legitimate NBA shooter, noting that he “was a 40.5 percent three-point shooter this past season and took about 40 percent of his threes from NBA range,” and also “made those NBA range shots from beyond 25 feet at 37.3 percent.”

Last season, the Nuggets did not really have a knockdown shooter like this to slot in alongside more defensively-oriented players like Braun and Watson, and if the shooting of one or both of Strawther and Tyson pans out, this should give Denver’s bench offense a significant boost.

The fate of Bruce Brown, who became the Nuggets’ permanent backup point guard after they traded away Bones Hyland at the deadline, also remains uncertain. Brown already declined his 2023-24 player option, and he stands to land a significantly more lucrative deal than Denver is contractually able to sign him to if he gets bigger offers from other teams, which is a near certainty.

This is where Pickett comes in as a possible safety net for a potential Brown departure. Pickett is universally described as a skilled, low-mistake playmaker with an extremely high basketball IQ, and (perhaps not unlike Monte Morris, who was likewise drafted in the second round) has the potential to effectively and efficiently run the point for Denver’s bench offense.

Pickett has a crafty, rather unconventional style in which he backs down opponents and posts up – a lot. In fact, Vecenie points out that last season “the most post-ups per game among any guard in the country this past season at 279 times,” and that he “was excellent at finding open players off kickouts in these circumstances,” and additionally, “has a wide array of moves to score.”

While Brown is a unique player in his own right (and, importantly, a far more experienced one), and so there is clearly not a one-to-one comparison with Pickett, the salient point is that whether immediately or a bit down the line, the Nuggets have a real need for another lead guard off the bench who can handle and distribute without turning the ball over, and Pickett checks a lot of those boxes.

Between the more defensively-focused set of rookies the Nuggets landed last season, and the new, more offensively-minded crop, Booth and his staff appear to have assembled a relatively balanced set of players in their youth-infusion pipeline, all possessing at least one skill if not more that could potentially translate to the NBA at a high or even elite level.

And while banking on experience may cause them to pass on players with higher potential upside, they will surely be hoping this calculus will pay off in the form of helping to keep the Nuggets highly competitive and right in the mix of championship contention in the short term, and for years to come.