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The Summer of 2023 worked heavily in favor of Zeke Nnaji’s basketball career. The player in front of him in the rotation (Jeff Green) found greener pastures in Houston & the player he was most likely to compete with for the newly vacated rotation spot (Vlatko Cancar) went down with a season ending injury before training camp even started.
Zeke’s offseason culminated with a brand new, 4-year, $32 million contract extension. Just about everything that could go Zeke’s way did just exactly that. However, once Summer gave way to Fall and the basketball games started there were problems, and those problems presented themselves from preseason to postseason. Ultimately, Nnaji’s ’23/’24 season was anything but the perfect scenario that his Summer was.
There was plenty of hope and belief that Zeke was going to finally take his permanent spot in the rotation and develop into the type of player the Nuggets pictured when they selected him with the 22nd overall pick in the 2020 NBA draft. With the opportunity finally available, there were no excuses.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way for Nnaji. In the preseason the issues started to come to the forefront. The Nuggets played back to back games against the Chicago Bulls who had Nikola Vucevic starting at center with noted rebounder Andre Drummond off the bench.
The first game didn’t go terrible with Vuc sitting and Drummond getting the start, but when Drummond returned to his bench role for the second game and matched up with Nnaji, Zeke’s poor rebounding skills showed up in a big way. Drummond grabbed thirteen rebounds in just fourteen minutes while Nnaji looked completely helpless on the glass. That proved to be a preview of things to come.
