Lakers Face Competition for Cam Whitmore as Nuggets Show Interest

The Los Angeles Lakers just picked up another problem in the West — and this one comes in the form of a 22-year-old free agent with bounce, bulk and upside.

According to Marc Stein, the Denver Nuggets have “emerged as a team to watch” in the pursuit of Cam Whitmore, the former first-round pick who hit the market after the Cleveland Cavaliers waived him in late August. For a Lakers front office hunting for cheap athleticism around its stars, that’s exactly the kind of sentence they didn’t want to read.

Nuggets Circle Back on Their Own Deal

Denver’s interest isn’t random. It’s almost circular.

Whitmore reached free agency through a five-team deal that already involved the Nuggets. Cleveland acquired him from Washington in the transaction built around Peyton Watson, who moved from Denver to the Cavaliers. The Nuggets, in turn, took back a 2031 first-round pick, a 2032 second-round pick and Julian Reese. Weeks later, Cleveland cut Whitmore loose.

Now the defending champions are eyeing the same player they helped send down this path, with a chance to replace some of Watson’s lost athleticism at a fraction of the cost and commitment.

That’s the attraction. Whitmore is no longer tied to the four-year, $15.6 million rookie contract he signed after the Houston Rockets drafted him No. 20 overall in 2023. He’s an unrestricted free agent, available for whatever a contender is willing to risk on a player whose talent has always outpaced his reliability.

There is, undeniably, risk.

Whitmore played only 21 games for Washington in 2025-26 before a shoulder-related medical issue shut down his season. In those 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 beyond the arc. The raw numbers don’t leap off the page.

Stretch them out, though, and the intrigue comes back fast. Over his three NBA seasons, Whitmore has averaged 21.8 points per 36 minutes. At 6-foot-6, strong in the open floor and still younger than some of the rookies who just heard their names called, he looks exactly like the kind of reclamation project contenders talk themselves into every September.

The question has never been about tools. It’s about turning them into winning minutes.

Lakers’ Upside Play Meets a New Rival

For the Lakers, Whitmore always profiled as a luxury swing, not a savior.

They’ve already done the heavy lifting on their rotation, bringing back Austin Reaves and adding Collin Sexton, Quentin Grimes and Sandro Mamukelashvili. That group gives Los Angeles enough established scoring and ball-handling to avoid asking a 22-year-old to fix anything major on day one.

Which is why Whitmore made so much sense.

On this roster, he could be the upside bet at the end of the bench — a powerful wing who can run, finish and pressure the rim without the burden of carrying an offense. If he hits, the Lakers get a cost-controlled athlete who changes the speed and physicality of their second unit. If he doesn’t, the price was low and the gamble easy to walk away from.

Denver’s reported interest changes that equation.

The Nuggets can offer something few contenders can match: a stable, championship-tested ecosystem, a defined role, and the credibility of a team that just turned depth pieces into a title run. For a young scorer trying to reset his career, that’s a compelling pitch.

It doesn’t mean Whitmore is Denver-bound. It doesn’t confirm the Lakers are even at the table right now. But it does mean that what once looked like a quiet, low-cost lottery ticket for Los Angeles now risks becoming a bidding war, or at least a choice between two Western powers selling very different visions of his future.

For a Lakers team desperate to inject more youth and explosiveness around its established core without burning through cap flexibility, Whitmore was the kind of flier that made too much sense.

Now the Nuggets might be reaching for the same ticket — and in a conference this crowded, even a 22-year-old swingman can tilt the margins that matter in May.