The Nuggets Dug Themselves Into a Deep Hole, and Now Nikola Jokić’s Future Hangs in the Balance

The Nuggets were not exactly having the ideal offseason leading into Wednesday night. By Thursday morning, it turned into a nightmare.

Denver had largely been inactive throughout the summer to this point, a result of an already-stacked payroll that had the team very close to the second apron as a starting point. Negotiations with the team’s two restricted free agents—Spencer Jones and Peyton Watson—were limited as the front office searched for ways to keep those guys around without incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in tax penalties. The Thunder forced their hand by signing Jones to a modest deal, which the Nuggets matched even though it sent them over the second apron.

Then, on Wednesday night, they waved the white flag on trying to keep Watson. As part of a massive five-team transaction, the Nuggets dumped Watson in exchange for a 2031 Cavaliers first-round pick and a 2032 second-rounder. It’s a disastrous outcome. They not only failed to keep their best defender from last season on the roster, but they also couldn’t even get a replacement for him in return.

All told, that means Denver lost Watson while retaining Jones and adding Alpha Diallo along with Marvin Bagley as free agents. The result is a roster undeniably worse than last season, the ending of which proved the Nuggets were not up to competing in the West.

Looming over it all? Nikola Jokić’s contract status.

The superstar big man and perennial MVP candidate could become a free agent next offseason if he turns down his $62.8 million player option, the final year of the max contract he signed in 2022. Every time he’s asked about it, Jokić insists he’s in Denver for the long haul, hard stop. Still—the fact remains he can hit the open market one year from now and the Nuggets have done nothing to improve their championship odds beyond a few rolls of the dice with minimum free agent contracts.

They’ve dug themselves a deep hole over the last few years to get to this point, and should feel mighty nervous about how this season will unfold. It feels like Jokić’s future is in the balance.

Nuggets’ biggest post-championship decisions have all been whiffs

The Nuggets won the title in 2023 and figured to be on the shortlist of contenders for years to come. But every big contract decision has been a mistake to some degree and slowly chipped away at their capability to contend, leading to their current status.

The first was the most baffling and least defensible: offering Zeke Nnaji a four-year, $32 million extension. If you’re wondering who that is, well, that proves my point. Nnaji didn’t even average 10 minutes per game the year prior to signing that deal and had shown zero NBA-caliber skills, not even in theory. The best spin on the contract at the time was that his $8 million annual salary would make for an easy trade chip. But Denver failed to use him for anything and he remains on the roster to this day, with that salary acting as deadweight on the cap sheet; he averaged 3.7 points in 12 minutes off the bench per game last year. Every single dollar counts in the apron era of the NBA, and the Nuggets are basically burning $8 million per year.

Then came the Jamal Murray extension in 2024. The Nuggets gave him the max—a four-year, $207 million deal—and it’s hard to criticize them for doing so, even with the benefit of hindsight. He earned a reputation as a playoff riser while acting as a tailor-made No. 2 offensive option for Jokić. Denver definitely doesn’t win its title without Murray. But this isn’t a good deal in light of how the apron operates. Murray is a great player but a flawed one—he is a poor defender to the point he has to be scorching offensively to offset his problems on the other end. That was fine when he was, indeed, scorching offensively all the time but the last two playoff runs have been something of a return to earth. Murray remains a talented and productive piece but his enormous salary is a hindrance to putting good players around him who can compensate for his weaknesses. The fact that Jokić fails to do so doesn’t help.

That same fall, the Nuggets gave Aaron Gordon a lucrative extension as well, a three-year $103 million pact. That has proven to be a mistake, but not one Denver could’ve seen coming. Gordon has dealt with a sudden onslaught of hamstring issues since inking the deal, missing 31 games in 2024–25 before sitting out 46 last year. In that span he was fully healthy (or close to it) for only one of the Nuggets’ three playoff series; they lost the other two. A whiff due to truly poor luck, but a whiff nonetheless.

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Finally, the Christian Braun deal in 2025. Braun was a solid low-cost, low-usage piece of the championship core who profiled as a three-and-D backcourt for a contender. As such, Denver forked over a $125 million extension. There was an expectation of growth included in the deal. If he was good enough to be part of the Nuggets’ championship run in his second season, surely he’d only get better from there. That didn’t prove true last year, as Braun regressed while battling injuries. Now the team is left to simply hope a $25 million annual player can reach his previous peak of averaging 15.4 points per game while only being able to guard three positions. That number should belong to a player who is undeniably the second or third-best on the roster. Braun is the fourth-best player in Denver on his best days.

In a vacuum, all of these are defensible decisions when viewed through the lens of betting on a championship core. But all together, it makes the Nuggets a very expensive team with no flexibility—forcing the front office to spend the last two offseasons covering up for their mistakes.

Last summer Denver traded Michael Porter Jr.’s $38 million annual deal for Cameron Johnson’s $20 million annual deal, which isn’t that bad of a basketball trade or a financial one; MPJ was coming off a brutal playoff showing and Johnson is one of the NBA’s better catch-and-shoot threats. But in order to offload his salary, the Nuggets had to send a 2032 first-round pick to the Nets in the deal. Which was their only tradable first-round pick. And the only reason the Nuggets were desperate enough to include it was due to the above decisions.

Which brings us to the Watson situation of this offseason. The Nuggets were unable to sign him to a market-rate deal because it would have resulted in a payroll of hundreds of millions, an untenable situation for most ownership groups and a situation the Kroenke family (famously averse to paying any sort of tax among their sports teams) would never willingly enter. Their ability to get creative on the trade market was almost nil because there were no tradable draft picks to use as grease. And so they had to simply give up and allow a defensive dynamo with a bit of offensive punch (the perfect Jokić teammate) to leave town. The move probably felt more palpable because it returned a tradable first-round pick for Denver to use... which was only necessary because the front office threw the last one into the Porter Jr. trade... which was only necessary because of the previous money handed out. So on and so forth.

It’s a domino effect of miscues that leaves Denver in a tough spot when it comes to Jokić.

Jokić’s future in Denver suddenly feels up in the air

Nikola Jokić could become a free agent next offseason. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

We understand that Jokić is not the typical NBA superstar. He doesn’t seem to have a wandering eye for a larger market outside of Colorado, and there’s never been a single rumor of discontent surrounding his camp since he was drafted by the Nuggets 12 years ago. Speculation about him wanting out has been baseless to this point.

But the same could have been said about Giannis Antetokounmpo until the last few seasons. These guys are insanely competitive at their core; they couldn’t have gotten to this point without that drive. Despite a public approach akin to Squidward’s “I really wish I weren’t here right now” button from SpongeBob SquarePants when it comes to the NBA, Jokić does wants to win. His ruthless competitive nature is clear when he’s playing his 40th minute chasing a victory in the regular season.

What happens if the Nuggets don’t prove capable of supporting his winning efforts after the last few years? We don’t know, because we’ve never seen Jokić in that spot before. We do know the MVP big man had an opportunity to sign an extension last offseason and chose not to do so. He’s been eligible to sign an extension this offseason and still hasn’t done so. Which means the possibility he declines his player option to enter free agency is absolutely on the table. Until he signs a new deal, that’s the reality of the situation.

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Is it the likeliest outcome? No. Jokić has been consistent in his answers when asked about this matter, stating he wants to be in Denver for the rest of his career. Reports have also suggested he hasn’t signed an extension yet because he can get the most money by doing so in the summer of 2027. As of now, it’s most probable Jokić signs a long-term contract to stay with the Nuggets for a truly obscene salary; it may wind up being the last deal of his career given he’ll be 32.

But before the Watson trade, that felt like a certainty. With the team moving visibly backwards, doubt has suddenly been strewn.

Perhaps the Nuggets have another move in the works after getting locked in place by the nature of Watson’s restricted free agency. Perhaps they are totally confident better injury luck and a shuffled bench will ensure Watson’s departure doesn’t matter in the big picture. As it currently stands, however, Denver is deep in a hole of its own making and scrambling to get out is hurting its future.

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