Lakers Face Competition for Cam Whitmore as Nuggets Join Chase

The Los Angeles Lakers just picked up a new problem in their hunt for upside on the cheap.

According to Marc Stein, the Denver Nuggets have stepped into the race for Cam Whitmore, the 22-year-old former first-round pick who hit free agency after the Cleveland Cavaliers waived him in late August. One line from Stein will have front offices paying attention: Denver has “emerged as a team to watch” in the chase for Whitmore.

For the Lakers, that’s the last thing they wanted to hear.

They’d already been linked to Whitmore as a low-cost, high-upside flyer. Now the defending Western Conference power that just reshaped his career path is circling back, armed with a clear need and a clean cap sheet slot.

Nuggets Circle Back on a Familiar Name

Denver’s interest carries a twist: Whitmore reached the market because of a deal that involved the Nuggets themselves.

Cleveland picked him up from Washington in a five-team trade built around Peyton Watson, who moved from Denver to the Cavaliers. The Nuggets walked away with future draft capital — a 2031 first-round pick, a 2032 second-rounder — plus Julian Reese. The Cavaliers later cut Whitmore loose on August 28, turning him into an unrestricted free agent.

Now Denver is considering using that same pathway to replenish something it just gave up.

Watson’s departure cost the Nuggets a dose of youthful athleticism on the wing. Whitmore offers a similar profile: 6-foot-6, strong, explosive in the open floor, and still only 22. The difference is the price. Instead of a rookie-scale deal — the four-year, $15.6 million contract he signed after going No. 20 overall to Houston in the 2023 NBA Draft — Whitmore can now be had for a fraction of that commitment.

For a contender trying to refresh the edges of its rotation without clogging future flexibility, that’s exactly the sort of swing you take.

There is, of course, a reason he’s available.

Whitmore managed only 21 games for Washington in 2025-26 before a shoulder-related medical issue ended his season. In limited minutes, he averaged 9.2 points and 2.8 rebounds in 16.9 minutes, shooting 45.6% from the field but just 28.6% from three. The flashes were there, the efficiency from deep was not, and the health questions linger.

Normalize the minutes, though, and the intrigue jumps off the page. Over his three NBA seasons, Whitmore has averaged 21.8 points per 36 minutes. That’s the kind of per-minute scoring punch that gets analytics departments lobbying coaches for a longer look.

The question, as always with him: can those tools translate into winning, reliable minutes on a team with real ambitions?

Why the Lakers Still Fit — and Why Denver Complicates It

Los Angeles doesn’t need Whitmore to walk in and save the offense.

The Lakers already handled their primary scoring structure this offseason. Austin Reaves is back. Collin Sexton, Quentin Grimes and Sandro Mamukelashvili have arrived, giving Darvin Ham more established options who can dribble, shoot or at least keep the ball moving.

That context actually makes Whitmore more attractive, not less.

In L.A., he would be an upside bet, not a pressure-packed solution. A developmental swing on a big, explosive wing who can attack in transition, live off secondary actions and grow in the gaps between LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the rest of the rotation. At 22, with his frame and burst, that’s a rare package to find sitting on the market in September.

Denver, though, sees the same thing.

For the Nuggets, Whitmore represents a chance to backfill the bounce and physicality they surrendered in Watson without tying up a major chunk of the payroll. Slot him behind their established core, let him run the floor next to Nikola Jokic’s passing and Jamal Murray’s gravity, and the path to a meaningful role becomes easy to imagine.

That’s the tension for the Lakers. Stein’s report doesn’t guarantee Whitmore ends up in Denver, and it doesn’t confirm that Los Angeles has put a concrete offer on the table. But the calculus has changed. A player who looked like a quiet, low-cost lottery ticket for a team hunting athleticism on the margins suddenly has another contender doing the same math.

In a market this thin for young wings with real scoring juice, one more serious bidder can be the difference between landing a project and watching him grow somewhere else.

For the Lakers, the question now is simple: how badly do they want to keep the Nuggets from scratching the same lottery ticket?