Every young NBA team needs a Paul Millsap

He really is the perfect veteran.

Signing Paul Millsap in 2017 didn’t always look like a great idea for the Denver Nuggets.

In fact, this time last year, it straight-up looked like a mistake. The Nuggets spent $60 million guaranteed over two years for the all-star forward in his 30s, without knowing if they were close to contention. Millsap spent much of the 2017-18 season injured, missing 44 games as the Nuggets fell short the playoffs. His contract, though short, created a salary cap crunch just as the first of Denver’s young stars, Nikola Jokic, came up for contract renewal. It made for an uncomfortable spring and summer.

But the Nuggets only missed out on the No. 8 seed by a game, and Jokic had become something of a revelation. Denver decided to lean further in by paying Jokic andWill Barton, and dumping Wilson Chandler to make the numbers work.

And work it did. Millsap stayed healthy in 2018-19, Jokic continued to make his mark — he’ll be on an All NBA team this season, and could finish top five in MVP voting — and other young players like Jamal Murray perked up. The Nuggets ended up as the No. 2 seed, and now sit one win away from the Western Conference finals after five straight years in the lottery and nine years without a playoff series win.

The Millsap gambit isn’t the biggest reason for the rise. Jokic gets that credit — he was coming off of the bench as of December 2016, and now he’s an All-NBA center? That’s an incredible leap.

But Millsap matters. A lot.

Defense is where Denver faltered last season, and defense is where Millsap makes his greatest impact. During the regular season, Millsap and Gary Harris (who missed 25 games) were the two starters with positive defensive on-off numbers. By contrast, the defense was better when Jokic, Murray and Will Barton (who missed a lot of time but started almost half the season) were on the bench.

Millsap isn’t just a grinding, smart defender, though. He can get buckets, too. Ask the Blazers, who watched Millsap set the tone early in Game 5, racking up 19 points in the first half.

He’s the best version of the crafty quasi-big man: not quite Al Jefferson in the post, not quite a Brook Lopez-style floor stretcher, but pieces of all of that in one solid package. He’s basically Al Horford’s body double, which is why those Hawks teams were so darn stable and good.

Denver can be a young, flighty team, and Millsap is the only core player with real playoff experience. He’s Denver’s only rotation player born before 1990 ... and he was born in 1985! (Yes, he’s five years older than the next-oldest Nuggets rotation player, Mason Plumlee.) Millsap was a high school senior when Murray was in kindergarten. He’s been involved in myriad more important games than any other Nugget, and sometimes it shows. Millsap rarely gets rattled. He can get beat. He can miss shots. But he doesn’t spin out of control.

Increasingly, that calm has rubbed off on the other Nuggets. Coach Michael Malone has a huge asset in Millsap’s smarts and calm when things go sideways. Jokic and Murray benefit from knowing Millsap is there to anchor the defense with Harris and the assortment of Denver role players (Torrey Craig, Monte Morris, Malik Beasley). Jokic and Murray benefit from knowing Millsap is there to provide some offensive pressure relief when they need it. Millsap fills a lot of holes for a team with plenty.

That Millsap contract didn’t look pretty when he was in street clothes half of last season, and it probably wasn’t comfortable when the Nuggets were making tough decisions on Barton and Chandler last summer. But it sure as heck worked out in the end, and the Nuggets are here in part because the front office took a risk on a massive contract for Millsap.

It paid off, as Millsap almost always does.