Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
The Nuggets are playing fast and loose with Nikola Jokic’s prime.
The Denver Nuggets are one of the most fascinating teams in the NBA entering the 2024-25 season. Denver won its first NBA championship in franchise history in 2023 as star center Nikola Jokic emerged as the best player in the world. The Nuggets looked poised to repeat as champions last season as Jokic’s earned his third MVP, but a nagging injury to Jamal Murray at the wrong time and a glaring lack of depth eventually cost Denver a back-to-back bid when the Minnesota Timberwolves knocked them out in a classic seven-game second round series.
Jokic turns 30 in Feb. of this season, and remains very much in the prime of his career. You would think a team built around a singular, historic talent like Jokic would be going all-in on surrounding him with veterans who fit the team’s proof of concept from its 2023 championship, but instead Denver has bled talent the last two summers.
Bruce Brown and Jeff Green left the team in free agency in the summer of 2023 following the title run. This summer saw an even bigger deflection: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — arguably the team’s best defender and spot-up three-point shooter —left the Nuggets for a three-year, $66 million deal from the Orlando Magic.
Denver’s front office always had a plan to replace the loss of these key veterans. Lead executive Calvin Booth has been transparent in his desire to see a group of younger players he drafted over the last few years get a chance to grow into bigger roles. Younger players on rookie contracts make less money, and that gives the Nuggets more flexibility with the more punitive ‘second apron’ hanging over the team. There’s only one problem: head coach Mike Malone didn’t think they were good enough to handle big minutes down the stretch last year.
It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots that Malone and Booth might not totally be seeing eye-to-eye on playing time. ESPN’s Zach Lowe talked about that possibility on the latest episode of his essential podcast, The Lowe Post, which has of course been aggregated everywhere. “There are rumblings,” Lowe said on his podcast this week. “Rumblings! That the coaching staff and front office, or at least the head coach and the front office, aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye in Denver. To a degree even unusual for the NBA.”
Lowe didn’t present this as breaking news, exactly. Booth even talked about how he and Malone might not always see eye-to-eye after the season:
Booth doesn’t see any huge holes in the Nuggets roster but he does say sometimes he and Malone’s views sometimes do not align. But it’s rare. pic.twitter.com/JjsIng7bDg
— Jake Shapiro (@Shapalicious) May 23, 2024
By losing KCP and signing only Russell Westbrook this summer, Booth has essentially forced Malone’s hand this season to play his young guys. That group includes Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett, and Hunter Tyson. The Nuggets are already down one promising youngster after rookie DaRon Holmes III tore his ACL at summer league.
Denver losing KCP is one of several free agency deflections — along with the Clippers losing Paul George — that will be blamed on the second apron. Denver may have been set up for multiple seasons in the second apron if it matched KCP’s contract, which would have limited its team building avenues and increased its luxury tax moving forward. These apron ducking moves absolutely scan as cheapness from ownership, even if there is merit to keeping flexibility moving forward.
This is all a game of risk and reward. Denver could have risked limited flexibility in the future to bringing KCP back and trying to win the championship right now while Jokic is still at its peak. Instead, it’s risking decreasing its championship odds this year to potentially elongate the team’s window around Jokic.
The big mistake Booth made was paying Zeke Nnaji, his first round pick from 2020. Nnaji just wasn’t good enough to play real minutes last season even as Denver badly needed a backup big man. He’s making almost $9 million per year this season on a de-escalating contract. It sure would have been nice to have that money free to try to keep Caldwell-Pope around.
Booth offered an incredibly honest assessment of his desire to develop the young core ahead of last season even if it cost his team the 2024 title. Here’s what he told The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor:
“I just want dudes that we try to develop, and it’s sustainable,” Nuggets GM Calvin Booth told me last August. “If it costs us the chance to win a championship this year, so be it. It’s worth the investment. It’s more about winning three out of six, three out of seven, four out of eight than it is about trying to go back-to-back.”
Denver didn’t win the championship in 2024, but it also didn’t really develop its young players. Only Braun was in the playoff rotation, while Watson was largely a healthy scratch in the second round and Strawther was hurt.
There’s also the Jamal Murray piece to consider here. Murray was underwhelming throughout the 2024 playoffs and never looked fully healthy. He was bad in the 2024 Paris Olympics for Canada, too. By the way, he’s also due for a massive extension with the Nuggets that still hasn’t been signed. Can Murray get back to being the second best player on a title team, or is he already starting to slip?
Denver should still be very good regardless, but with Oklahoma City loading up, Dallas remodeling its roster, and other challengers continuing to emerge, it feels like the Nuggets are just trying to keep pace in the West at a time when they should be leading the pack. Denver could have just re-signed KCP and figured out its payroll crunch later. Instead, it’s making a huge bet on a bunch of unproven talent around the game’s best player.
Jokic deserves to have more than one ring on his finger by the time his career is over. The Nuggets are making incredibly bold — and cheap! — moves that will either look genius or incredibly stupid after this season.
