2026-27 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

feel like i saw this a while back, but the report that the nuggets offer to watson has been 4/70 with a team option on the last year seems almost constructed to drive him off.

 

He’s as good as gone.

I assume they couldn’t dump Braun onto someone and aren’t fully convinced that Cam Johnson isn’t as good as Watson and can be had on a cheaper deal moving forward.

I mean if they wanted to dump Cam Johnson, you have to believe we’d be trying to bring a third team in to take Jake, Hardy and Knecht.

Watson most probably gets traded, but a team has to absorb him into cap space to help Denver with their luxury tax. While sending adequate draft capital - not sure who could do that right now.

He may be forced to take the QO this season as a result.

 

if he takes his QO, it puts them 8m over the 2nd apron for basically last year's team with bagley and tyus jones instead of valanciunas and thj. they have until the deadline to shed salary, but it's not like there will be greater opportunities, and if they are in that mode, they'll be pretty desperate sellers.

as of now, the path for cleveland is even more difficult than ours in some ways (they have better players on short deals and more picks, but the contracts are bigger and thus harder to absorb). the bucks have a TE big enough to take in a S&T for watson (or kuminga) BUT only 12m in first apron space, so they'd have to shed money in a separate deal to make it work. boston is in a similar boat (big TE, but apron).

charlotte and memphis both have big TEs AND the requisite apron space, but their rosters are super full.

i'm guessing those are the teams to watch in the watson and kuminga moves. they could get cash to cut some of their less desirable players and picks for the space rental. alternatively, i suppose they could step in and take the player for themselves. like, if you're denver, do you take gg jackson for peyton watson? i think i would.