Report: Nuggets, Danilo Gallinari agree to two-year, $34M extension
The Denver Nuggets and Danilo Gallinari have reportedly agreed to a two-year extension that will keep the forward there until 2018.
By
Zach Harper
•
2 min read
The end of the 2012-13 season was devastating for Danilo Gallinari and the Denver Nuggets. While they were completing a 57-win regular season campaign, the Nuggets lost a key member of their team. With six games left in the season, Gallinari went down with a torn ACL. A couple of weeks later, the Nuggets had been upset in the first round of the playoffs when Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors beat them in six games. Gallinari missed the entire 2013-14 season before coming back this past season.
By the end, he played well enough for Denver to feel like the health of his knee was fine moving forward. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports, the Nuggets and Gallinari plan on continuing to be together. They're finalizing an agreement on a two-year contract extension that will give Gallinari and extra $34 million through the 2017-18 season.
Denver Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari is finalizing an agreement on a two-year extension worth an additional $34 million on his contract, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
The deal is a restructuring that includes a $2.5 million increase on the $11.5 million owed to Gallinari as he enters the final year of his contract in 2015-16, sources said.
Under the newly negotiated terms, Gallinari will make $14 million this season, the first of a deal that runs through the 2017-18 season, sources said. He will make $15.5 million in 2016-17 and has a player option worth $16.1 million for the third year of the deal and a full trade kicker, sources said.
After missing the entire 2013-14 season, Gallinari took quite a while to bounce back and get himself back into form. Over the first 40 games of the season (he played 59 total), he averaged just 9.2 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.1 assists in 20.6 minutes while shooting 35.5 percent from the field and 32.2 percent from downtown. But shortly after the All-Star break, Gallinari looked much more like his old self.
In the final two months (19 games) of the season, Gallo exploded for Denver. He averaged 19.3 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 2.1 assists in 31.8 minutes. He made 45.6 percent of his shots and 40 percent of his 6.8 3-point attempts per game. It was much more in line with what he was doing before the injury, only with more scoring and a higher accuracy from 3-point range. If he's able to give them this kind of production in the next three seasons, he becomes an invaluable wing for Denver and could help them get back into the playoffs.
