September 12, 2018

A few years in the doldrums have seen the Suns try out various young players, looking to identify core players, while also trying to flank them with veterans who can create the right culture and play with sufficient positional IQ to be able to help on the court as well. The results have been on the wrong side of mixed, though, and so as another era begins after their work on draft night, a few veterans remain on the team with little to tie them to the team for the year.

Arthur is only with the team as filler, swapped out for Jared Dudley above purely so as to be able to give the team enough room to trade for Richaun Holmes. He may add some value to the team as a veteran three-and-D frontcourt option, but in a front court with all of Holmes, Ryan Anderson, Deandre Ayton, Dragan Bender and T.J. Warren (assuming his future is mostly at power forward, which it should be) in it, that role will be so small as to be very dispensable. The same is true to a lesser degree of Chandler, a good player for a long time who can still rebound and move despite his age, although that same age makes him a very good buyout candidate. Considering the lack of roster space right now, and the assumed need to sign De'Andre Melton, either or both of these may happen sooner rather than later. To sign Melton will need both roster spots and cap space; the minimum salary exception and cap room mid-level exception, the two things remaining available to be used here, are both limited to a maximum of two years.

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June 29, 2018

Darrell Arthur
PF - 6’9, 235lbs - 30 years old - 9 years of experience

If proof were needed that Paul Millsap was not exactly targeted, Arthur’s contract is it.

Whereas once he was a key rotation player for Denver, Arthur could hardly get a minute last season, not because of any significant absence of his own or because he got any noticeably worse, but because there was simply too much traffic in front of him, something Millsap and indeed the entire offseason only compounded.

Had he played, the chances are that Arthur would have returned the same sort of performances as years past. The ones that do not impress in basic box scores, but which feature good technically correct rotations and man to man defence, a below-average rebounding rate, and some jump shots, which increasingly regularly come from three-point range.

I guess we’ll never know, though.

Player Plan: One year and $7,464,912 remaining after exercising his player option. Might need to stretch it if Faried cannot be moved. Hopefully not, as despite the more immediate financial pressures, they will also be there in coming years, which a stretched salary would affect. Has no trade value unless willing to take on salary, which seems very unlikely.

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June 29, 2017

Darrell Arthur
PF, 6’9, 235lbs, 29 years old, 8 years of experience

Spent much of the year injured, but in the time he managed, he was indeed the floor stretching defensive big he was meant to be. In his absence, Chandler handled the defensive part of that role, and Hernangomez shot better than Arthur ever has in years prior; however, with a three point rate that ballooned to .544% (after never previously being higher than .286%), a career high shooting percentage from downtown of .453% (up from .385%), and a career high overall true shooting percentage of .583% (up from .514%), the new three-point shooting Arthur is not the offensive net negative he used to be. This may then give him value to cash in on. Notwithstanding the fact that, as one of the poorest defensive teams in the league, the Nuggets need as much defence as they can, it is hard to find a role for Arthur going forward given his overall limita-tions compared to the potential of Hernangomez et al. When healthy, Arthur has a role on any team in this league. So with that in mind, and with a healthy start to next season, let them all come bid on that.

Player Plan: Two years for a shade under a combined circa. $15 million remaining, with the 2018/19 year being a player option. Keep for now with an eye on a trade.

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November 13, 2013

Regardless of how much stronger the center position is than the common narrative on its weakness would have you believe, productive fives are still the most valued commodity out there. And when you've got three when you only need two, you deal from the position of strength to concurrently fill one of your weaknesses. This is what the Nuggets intended to do this summer when they traded Koufos to the Grizzlies, receiving in exchange backup power forward Darrell Arthur and the rights to draft-and-stash big man Joffrey Lauvergne.

In theory, the Nuggets dealt an excess asset to fit a more pressing weakness. However, both of those criteria are subject to scrutiny. Importantly, the word "backup" in that description of Arthur is doing rather a lot here. Arthur is a decent player, indisputably, but he is also an average to decent backup at a position where that is not too hard to come by. Arthur helps a team on both ends of the court, but not hugely - he is a solid placeholder until the star player returns after the timeout, and not capable of much more than that.

The same is somewhat true of Koufos, a quality player, but a fringe starter in light of the aforementioned league-wide depth at the center position, and certainly only a backup in Memphis behind the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, Marc Gasol. But if you're trading a backup for a backup, you should be sure you're getting the better backup. Put simply, Koufos is better than Arthur, by a noticeable amount. This is true of both his value as a player and his value as an asset. Not only has Arthur yet to produce any season of the quality that Koufos did last year (8.0 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.4 bpg, 17.2 PER), but he is also one year older and with a much greater injury history. By no performance metric did Denver upgrade in this swap, and Lauvergne does not offset it. And ultimately, rather than balance their roster, they only further unbalanced it.

You can sign a player of Arthur's calibre much more easily than one of Koufos'. This is a market in which, for example, Tyler Hansbrough signed for one guaranteed year at a shade over $3 million, a highly comparable player on a highly comparable contract available without needing to lose a starting center. Indeed, Denver knows the power forward market well after having themselves made a splash in it this summer - despite trading for Arthur, they subsequently threw three years and $16.15 million at J.J. Hickson. If they needed a power forward, free agency could have addressed it. Alternatively, the Nuggets could have not looked outside at all, and instead relied upon the enigmatic but hugely talented Anthony Randolph to fill the small backup power forward hole - unreliable as he may be, Randolph needs the opportunity to succeed, or he never will.

The point here is that, even if starter Kenneth Faried does indeed go on to be traded, Koufos did not need to be. In light of the stress fracture McGee has just suffered that rules him out indefinitely, the once great center depth is now a position of weakness for the Nuggets, with Mozgov being the only healthy player at the position. Hickson might go some way to fill this void, but Koufos definitely would, yet he was moved for a player whose role could have and should have been filled by the player they subsequently signed or the player they already had. As third choice power forward, Arthur ranks 12th on the team in minutes per game - when a fringe starting center under the age of 25 tied down to a tiny $3 million contract is traded, it is imperative that he returns much more than that.

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