Jordan Bell is projected as a late 1st/early 2nd-round pick in the NBA draft this evening. While most scouting reports agree that he is a great athlete with a high motor who spend his college career collecting blocks like they were Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupons, they also agreed that he had significant caveats—he’s undersized for his position, is not a good shooter, and while his suffocating defense helped Oregon get to the Final Four and kept them in the game against North Carolina for the first 38 minutes, his failure to box out in the last few possessions cost them the game.
So it might seem crazy that I’m hoping the Denver Nuggets grow some serious, uh, nuggets, and select him with the 13th pick in the draft, way above his projected spot. But I believe there are serious basketball-related reasons they should consider it, and am willing to record this in a safe, secluded spot where no one will ever see it—the Fan Posts section of the Denver Nuggets page on SB Nation.
Fit over BPA
Right now, there are exactly 3 players on the Nuggets that I would consider unmovable:
Jokic is the tall basketball boy and point center whose advanced stats suggest he may quickly become the best player Denver’s ever had (and, considering how tenuous our claims on Dikembe Mutombo are, may already be among the most iconic players Denver’s ever had). Harris is one of the league’s best-kept secrets, an all-around shooting guard who’s improved every year he’s been in the league. And Murray’s sweet shot and unquestionable toughness would be welcome on any team, while Jokic’s passing presence makes him a perfectly acceptable option at point guard.
So, assuming that these three are Denver’s starting lineup of the future, there’s two positions of need: small forward and power forward. Unfortunately, most of the players projected to be available around 13 are in positions where the Nuggets already have a glut of players. Donovan Mitchell, Terrance Ferguson, and Luke Kennard are all shooting guards—the Nuggets already have like eight of those. Zach Collins will likely be a very good big, but it’s doubtful that someone his size can play next to Jokic. Most of the dependable wings are projected to be taken in the top 10. So a gamble is in order.
One wing who could fall to Denver, and who might be a gamble, is OG Anunoby, and indeed most of the draft projections I’ve seen have Denver picking him at 13. Both Anunoby and Bell are superior athletes with freakish dimensions who project as multipositional defenders. And while Anunoby’s physical dimensions are more impressive than Bell’s, and he’s two and a half years younger, Bell isn’t coming off a major knee injury, and has some experience coming up big in high-pressure situations.
The tiebreaker, for me, comes down to fit once again. The Nuggets have Wilson Chandler for at least one more year, and Juancho Hernangomez is waiting in the wings, so they seem to be set at small forward for the foreseeable future. While this could justify them taking Anunoby and giving him a season to recover, I’d just as soon have Bell stepping in behind Kenneth Faried at power forward, and maybe learning some things that Faried never got the hang of, like how to shoot.
Glut of Bigs
The other reason I think the Nuggets should draft Bell way above his projections is that there’s no way Bell actually goes as late as he’s projected. Draft boards for this year are going to prove to be largely useless after about pick 16, as most of the players projected after that could best be described as "bigs whose complete lack of any discernible skill is offset by their size, so we feel compelled to put them as first-round picks." Please. If Justin Patton, John Collins, Jarrett Allen, Isaiah Hartenstein, T.J. Leaf, Bam Adebayo, or Harry Giles go any sooner than 25, it’s going to be the sign of an incompetent general manager. In other words, expect two of those guys to get drafted at 5 and 10, or maybe Vlade keeps trading down until he can select them all with picks 20-26.
The fact is, slow, tall centers are not en vogue in the league right now. The future looks like explosive, rangy guys like Bell, Anunoby, and North Carolina’s Justin Jackson, and general managers will be looking for those guys, especially since most of the teams picking in the second half of the draft are already set on bigs for the foreseeable future. The second half of the draft being packed with slow-footed centers is more the result of projection inertia than any great desire on the part of the Blazers and Jazz to stock up on backups for Jusuf Nurkic and Rudy Gobert.
Focus on Defense, Athletes
The Nuggets are obviously, rightfully focused on building their team around Nikola Jokic, whose insane court vision and outside shot make up for his below-average defense and lack of athleticism. This means that they should focus on shoring up those weaknesses with the rest of their roster. That means big, athletic guys who can shut down an opposing team’s offense on the perimeter before it gets to Jokic, and who can keep streaking to the rim to catch his baseline passes all game. Bell is easily the player on the draft board most suited to this sort of work, and Jokic’s considerable outside game gives his lack of shooting some latitude as well.
I Just Love Him
Finally, and, if I’m being honest, most significantly, I have to say that my reaction to Bell is that he’s probably the college player that made me the most unexpectedly excited this year. As an Arizona alum who watches his share of Pac-12 games, Bell stood out every time the Wildcats played Oregon. His consistent energy, insane leaping ability, and black-hole defense made him the one guy who always made me cringe whenever I realized that Allonzo Trier was driving toward him. Some players want to win so badly that you can feel it through the television screen—they seem to warp space and time in a way you don’t entirely understand. But if you watched Oregon in the tournament this year, you almost certainly experienced it.
There’s not a big chance that Jordan Bell develops into Draymond Green, but there’s not a big chance that ANY player develops into the sort of all-around monster Green has become. If there’s one thing that Green and Bell already seem to share, it’s an intensity and competitiveness that drives the truly great players. Bell’s failure to box out against North Carolina gave me pause, but those doubts were erased when I saw his emotional postgame interview, where he acknowledged his mistake and blamed himself for the team’s loss. Blaming himself was a major overreaction—Oregon wouldn’t have been in a position to win without him—but when a player with Bell’s physical gifts takes a loss that hard, it gives you an idea of how hard he’s going to fight for every win.
