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Nique Clifford has gotten a ton of coverage this week and he should. His story is really cool and he has an opportunity to have a great NBA career.

Another CSU graduate was selected in the second round of the draft, though, and that’s John Tonje. Tonje was an All-American at Wisconsin this past season but he played four years for the Rams and had a great career in Fort Collins before his ascension in the Big 10.

I’m not going to throw a bunch of stats at you or anything like that. But Tonje’s growth over the years has been pretty remarkable. Before signing with CSU, his only other offer out of high school was the Nebraska-Omaha. He was always a good athlete with potential. But that’s a guy who worked his butt off to make his dreams come true.

— Justin Michael

The NBA Draft was uneventful for the Nuggets. They had no picks and didn’t make any moves. Basically we’re still in the same spot we were when the week began, which is lacking depth and strapped for cash.

To be fair to this current regime, they didn’t sign Dario Saric or extend Zeke Nnaji. So it’s not like I’m trying to throw shade at them. They’re starting with fairly significant restraints in place. And that’s before we even get into the second apron stuff.

I get what the league was going for when they implemented the new rules a few years back. They wanted to create more parity and not have so many ‘super teams’ like we did in the past. But the second apron also has made maintaining roster continuity really challenging and it arguably punishes teams that draft well and want to be able to retain multiple players of their core.

You’ve seen the Nuggets let quality rotation players go. Ie. Bruce Brown and ‘KCP’. But it’s happening across the league. Just look at the Celtics right now. They won a title in 2023 but are already trying to dump contracts like they’re a Halloween store and it’s now the first week of November. EVERYTHING MUST GO.

There have been seven different champions in the last seven seasons, so I’m sure the NBA would argue their system is good for the game. Maybe it is. But it makes the whole offseason, free agency period, etc, fairly boring when nobody has any money to work with.

The NHL Draft begins today and the DNVR Avalanche crew will be live reacting to all of the latest news across the league. The Avs have very few picks this summer and none of them are in the early rounds. But you never know what might happen on draft day.

WATCH: DNVR Avalanche 2025 Draft Day Live

It’s well known that I’m not much of a CU guy. But the DNVR Buffs crew has been absolutely killing it this summer, especially when it comes to their recruiting coverage of the growing 2026 class.

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