Tim Connelly, President of Basketball Operations for the Denver Nuggets, has been granted permission to interview for the vacant General Manager position with the Washington Wizards.

Connelly is a native of Baltimore and cut his teeth in the Wizards’ front office. Now he has a chance to return.

Tim Connelly became the Nuggets’ Vice President of Basketball Operations in 2013 after Masai Ujiri left for Toronto. In Connelly’s tenure, the Nuggets have rebuilt their roster from the ground up. Connelly was at the helm when the team drafted young stars Gary Harris, Nikola Jokic, and Jamal Murray. Connelly drafted ten of the 17 players on their 2018-19 season roster, gave Torrey Craig and Brandon Goodwin a shot in summer league play, and landed the biggest free agent signing in recent Nuggets history with Paul Millsap.

Naturally, Nuggets fans are concerned with the ramifications of Connelly leaving Denver. He’s built a successful young core during his six years in town, and the outlook for the team is brighter than it’s been in a decade.

So why would the Nuggets allow him to be interviewed?

The Nuggets owe Connelly. Connelly took over for Masai Ujiri after the most successful regular season in Nuggets’ history. He guided the organization through some of the roughest years in franchise history, and because of his efforts the team just wrapped up an appearance as the 8th youngest playoff team ever. If ownership denied Connelly permission to interview, it’d be a bad look. It’s best to give him the opportunity to make a decision instead of holding him captive in the Mile High City. It also makes the organization a more desirable destination for future executives.

The Nuggets have a couple of options if Connelly decides to leave. The Nuggets have a couple of possible fallback plans. Nuggets General Manager Arturas Karnisovas is the logical Tim Connelly replacement. He’s already familiar with the organization, but more importantly he’s ready for the job. Karnisovas has interviewed for a handful of GM positions around the league in years past, and the Nuggets promoted him to GM in order to keep him in Denver. Karnisovas is regarded as a superb talent evaluator and may even be the Nuggets’ top mind in that regard.

So if Karnisovas moves up to President of Basketball Operations, who is the new GM?

This is where the fan hype comes in. Chauncey Billups has long expressed his interest in joining an NBA front office. He’s even interviewed for a couple of jobs. Despite his publicly stated interest, he’s actually turned down at least two NBA jobs (Detroit, Cleveland). It seems like Billups wants to join a front office, but it has to be the right situation. Is there any better situation than the one the Nuggets find themselves in right now? They’re a young and exciting team that just made national noise, and on top of that they have options. They could bank on their young core and continue to build or they could swing for the fences with a big-name free agent to make an immediate push for the NBA Finals.

Bottom line: The Nuggets would find themselves in potentially troubled waters if Tim Connelly decides to return home to Washington, but Arturas Karnisovas provides a reassuring safety net and Chauncey Billups provides an exciting possibility. Connelly leaving may sting, but it shouldn’t be a major detriment to a strong, young organization.