Denver Nuggets: Season Grades for the 2018-19 Players

The face when Welsh hit his first NBA three remains a high point of the season.

There’s no real way to tell what Thomas Welsh’s ceiling is.  The Nuggets used the 58th pick in the 2018 draft to add Walsh, the 7-foot center from UCLA but Walsh’s accolades are comparable to a first-round pick.

He shot North of 40% from three-point range and was a finalist in his Senior season for the Bruins for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar award, recognizing the top Division-I center.

Welsh has scoring chops and he is a legitimate seven-footer. He’s deceptively strong at 255lb. and is an accomplished shooter (49/40/83) from anywhere on the floor. Like Brandon Goodwin, Walsh is a project with a ton of upside. He’s from a premier NCAA program, he’s a former McDonald’s All-American and he’s just 23 years old.

What will have the greatest impact on Walsh’s opportunity with the Nuggets is how the team decides to move forward with Mason Plumlee .  We’ll talk more about Plumdog in another installment but it wouldn’t surprise if the popular, solid player moves on this summer. The Nuggets won’t be able to afford three seven-foot players and Jokic is an obvious lock. If Welsh can blossom in Summer League and camp, Denver would benefit from moving Plumlee off the books.

In keeping with the no particular order theme, we look at another player that was popular with teammates and fans alike: