DeMar DeRozan has agreed to a one-year, $3.9 million contract with the Denver Nuggets, closing the book on an uneventful two-season run with the Sacramento Kings.

The move comes after Sacramento waived him last July to cut down on its luxury tax bill, as it owed DeRozan $26 million for this coming season. The Kings tried to trade him first, but couldn’t find a deal that made sense for them.

Despite the lack of trade suitors though, DeRozan remains a credible scoring threat even at this advanced stage of his career.

The ninth overall pick in the 2009 draft has averaged 21.1 points across 17 NBA seasons. While last year’s 18.4 points per game with Sacramento was his lowest since his fourth season in the league and snapped a 12-season run of averaging at least 20 points per game, this was still quite a decent scoring mark as it was the 38th best in the league.

DeRozan joins a Denver team that just lost Peyton Watson, a 23-year-old wing who had developed into a credible three-and-D role player. DeRozan is close to his opposite: a veteran late in his career who isn’t a three-point shooter or an elite defender, but who can still score at an above-average rate, especially from the midrange.

Whether this works will come down to how well the six-time NBA All-Star DeRozan settles into a reduced role. In theory, he could start at shooting guard or small forward ahead of Christian Braun or Cam Johnson, but given his ball-dominant style, he’s probably better suited coming off the bench as Denver’s clear lead scorer in the second unit, operating as a third option behind Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. A bench role would also let him keep the shot diet that has worked for him for so long, and there’s a real chance he could put up numbers close to what he did last season even in that reserve role.

As easy as it may sound, a move to the bench would mark a real adjustment for DeRozan. He has started 1,252 of a possible 1,264 games in his career, with the only 12 games he’s ever come off the bench coming all the way back in his rookie season. But if a first-ever NBA championship is what he’s after, this is the trade-off that it will take.

Despite the presumed obstacles, there’s plenty to be excited about for DeRozan and the Nuggets. He has a real chance at a title for the first time in his career if he can buy into the role that Denver needs from him. The Nuggets, whatever questions they still have on defense, can clearly score with anyone in the league, and adding a player of DeRozan’s scoring pedigree, even in a diminished role, only strengthens their identity as contenders heading into the new season.