In the background of a Nuggets free agency saga that stalled for two months, Cam Johnson waited.
He’s used to this by now. He’s been traded twice in his career and almost traded other times. This scenario was a little different because he was expected to be collateral damage after a contract extension — a financial sacrifice to help his team to keep a different player. In Brooklyn, he was the hot commodity pursued by championship contenders. Now, he was in danger of being dumped by one.
And so he went about his summer, anticipating news. There wasn’t any. Weeks passed. Negotiations stalled between Denver and Peyton Watson. When the dust settled and the Nuggets reported for training camp this week, Johnson was still here. Watson wasn’t.
“First and foremost,” he said, “I am grateful to be back.”
Back for a second year in Denver, where he struggled to find his place early last season, where he still managed to shoot a career-high 43% from 3-point range, where he got his first taste of playoff basketball since 2023 and endured a crushing first-round defeat.
If the Nuggets had reached an extension agreement with Watson, then Johnson might’ve been somewhere else this week. Instead, he’s in Boulder with a better grasp of his team’s unorthodox offense — and crucially, with no hard feelings.
“I’ve been hearing (trade rumors) for a long time, and I was in the same position the offseason before, and the same position the offseason before that,” he said. “So I’ve been on the ones where you get traded. I’ve been on the ones where you don’t. I understand the business side of it. I don’t take anything personal that I hear. So it’s just kind of a waiting game. There’s no need to get too deep in your emotions about what the outcomes would be because of a situation like this, where I’m right back here with these guys, like nothing happened. … So you can call it whatever you want to call it. But we’re back, we’re ready to roll, and I’m excited for it.”
When the Nuggets gauged the market this offseason, they found no takers willing to offer an unprotected first-round pick for Johnson. That’s what they gave up (along with Michael Porter Jr.) in order to get him from Brooklyn in 2025, and that’s what they ended up receiving (along with a second-round pick) for Watson in 2026.
Johnson, 30, now enters a contract year with experience and confidence playing in the orbit of Nikola Jokic. He was Denver’s third-leading scorer in the ill-fated playoff series against Minnesota a few months ago, when Watson and Aaron Gordon were sidelined by injuries. He also averaged 15.2 points in his last 15 games of the regular season at a scorching 48.2% outside shooting clip. In his first 39 games as a Nugget, he had averaged 11.1 points with a quietly impactful presence, but also a concerning lack of involvement in Denver’s flow of offense.
“Most of it just comes from being in a new system, being in a system that’s a little bit different from the ones I’ve played in,” Johnson said. “Learning to find where those spots are and where those shots come from and where opportunities to be aggressive are. I think I got a better hold of it toward the end of the season. I told (Christian Braun) and P-Wat last year, they’ve always done such a good job with the cutting game, and playing off slip screens and playing off cuts to the basket with Jok and Jamal (Murray). That’s something that you watch so much, and it looks so easy, but it’s not overnight a lot of the time. … I think just that film work and honestly being in there, being in it, helped me figure it out.”
Remaining in Denver, regardless of the awkward context, means a shot at redemption in Johnson’s eyes. He’s been on three ambitious teams that have suffered painful endings. The Suns coughed up a 2-0 series lead in the 2021 NBA Finals, then won 64 games the next season only to get blown out in Game 7 of the second round.
The Nuggets were his next great chance, after a stint in Brooklyn. Their six-game loss to the Timberwolves in April hit him especially hard. Maybe it was the uncertainty of his future.
“It doesn’t sit with you well. … Something about losing in the playoffs makes you so ready to jump the gun,” he said. “Like, you can’t just fast-forward to next year’s playoffs. You have to lay the groundwork for it in the upcoming season. So that’s where we’re at right now, identifying what did go wrong in that series and how we can be better, and then how we can build toward that throughout the regular season.”
And what did go wrong, aside from the injuries and the inexplicable disappearance of Denver’s shot-making?
“You’ve gotta take pressure off Jamal and Jok a lot,” Johnson said. “They’re being hounded. Jamal was being hounded all series. Jok was being hounded all series. It’s kind of on us to be able to take the pressure off them a lot of the time, so that it kind of opens up everything. I feel like we got a little bit more slowed down than we were expecting to be, and things that were working all season were working not as well. That’s the bottom line. I think you’ve gotta be able to have dimensions, where you can find different ways to pitch in.”
DeMar DeRozan’s isolation game is meant to be part of the solution. Julian Strawther’s development is a key variable that has the Nuggets holding their collective breath.
And then there’s Johnson, an ingrained starter who believes he has more to offer.
“I wish I did that earlier,” he said of his late-season success. “… But all I can do now is try to keep that momentum rolling this year.”
