Troy Renck: Without change, tomorrow will be like today, and today stinks. The Nuggets can come back from this, but they cannot come back like this. You cannot lose to a Timberwolves team held together by duct tape and chicken wire, and run it back. So after falling in the first round for the first time since 2022, everything, aside from moving on from Nikola Jokic, must be on the table. While coach David Adelman appears safe — it is hard to envision the Nuggets simultaneously paying three coaches — the roster offers both realistic and alarming options. So, should the Nuggets trade Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon or Cam Johnson?
Sean Keeler: My goodness, are we doomed to be Bucks West? Because it all feels very Bucks West right now. Joker is our Giannis, a Euro legend in a flyover market, on a flyover team let down by his flyover organization. Murray flipped his usual script, and the ending stunk. The Blue Arrow was an All-Star in November and a falling star in April. Denver is 3-8 in the last three postseasons when Murray scores 18 or fewer in playoff contests. Playoff Mal? The guy who could take over a postseason contest? Gone. Vanished. A ghost. Murray has produced just two games of 34 points or more over his last 32 postseason appearances. Over the previous 32 playoff tilts, he’d done it six times. The Arrow turns 30 in February. The aim comes and goes. . So if someone will willingly take that $50 mil off your books, you’d be crazy not to entertain the offer.
Renck: The nightmare scenario, impossible to envision when the Nuggets made over their bench last offseason, came together as the Timberwolves ran Denver off the floor. Can we be honest? The Nuggets need to get younger and more athletic. Sometimes health makes decisions our mind won’t. Gordon is Mr. Nugget, forever a Denver legend. But it is time to move on. Gordon will be 31 in September and has missed 76 regular-season games the past two seasons because of a battery of soft-tissue hamstring and calf injuries. Gordon has $103.6 million on his contract over the next three years, if he picks up a player option in 2028-29. That sounds like a lot. It is not. Gordon is a glue player who will have a market. Can you move him back to Orlando or Washington for a first-round pick? Gordon is not the problem. But in pursuing a solution, poison pills must be swallowed to reshape this team for one more championship run with Jokic.
Keeler: You win or you learn, right? The OKC series last year showed that the Nuggets were getting older and slower. This year’s Minnesota series confirmed it. Josh Kroenke is running into the same thing that helped accelerate the Rockies’ decline after the ’17 and ’18 postseasons that feel so, so, soooo long ago. The Nuggets fell in love with their core pieces the way Dick Monfort fell in love with his starting pitchers from a decade ago, overpaid to keep them — and now they’re too old, too hurt, or both. It took the Spurs landing a young Kawhi Leonard to help Tim Duncan notch his last NBA title in 2014. Peyton Watson could be that Kawhi. But you’ve got to re-sign him first.
Renck: The Nuggets deserved better after adding depth last offseason. But in shaking up the beaker, the chemistry never aligned. This team lost its edge, its hunger, its willingness to take slights personally. It is why an argument can be made to move on from Murray — wouldn’t Toronto love to have him? His number belongs in the Ball Arena rafters, but Denver cannot beat the top defensive teams with the two-man game anymore. Cam Johnson is easier to ship out, but only if it means keeping Peyton Watson. Watson is critical to the offseason. He is long, rangy, defensive, and 23. When thinking about who the Nuggets must become, he is exactly who they need to be.
Keeler: Moving Gordon would hurt the most. Moving Johnson would hurt the least. Murray’s salary means you’d have to either get one or two bad contracts back or another aging superstar in return — and probably both. The Kroenkes tried it Michael Malone’s way, but it didn’t fly without Malone’s snarling and shaming. If the Nuggets don’t blow it up now, they risk riding this core straight off the nearest cliff.
