The league’s board of governors voted last week to institute a new system known as the “,” diminishing the worst teams’ odds of being awarded the No. 1 overall draft pick. The changes — which are designed to disincentivize teams from intentionally losing for draft positioning — will take effect in 2027.

• Sixteen teams will be in the lottery, up from 14 in the old system.
• A lottery drawing will be held to determine all 16 picks, rather than just the first four. (In the old system, Nos. 5-14 were determined by worst record in order of the remaining teams that did not receive a top-four pick in the lottery drawing.)
• The bottom three teams in the NBA can pick no lower than 12th. The remaining lottery teams can pick anywhere between No. 1 and No. 16.
• The bottom three teams in the NBA have only two lottery balls, resulting in a 5.4% chance of receiving the No. 1 overall pick and a 16% chance of getting a top-three pick. The seven remaining teams that miss the Play-In Tournament have three lottery balls, meaning an 8.1% chance at the No. 1 pick and a 24% chance of landing in the top three.
• The No. 9 and No. 10 Play-In seeds in each conference will receive two lottery balls each (same odds as the bottom three teams in the league), while the losers of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 Play-In games in each conference will receive one lottery ball each.

Nuggets team president and KSE vice chairman Josh Kroenke was on the competition committee that mulled over various solutions to the years-long tanking epidemic. But for the most part, the Nuggets have watched this issue take hold of the league from a safe distance, perched above the lower class of the league’s perpetual pursuit of the next superstar. They already have theirs. Nikola Jokic is coming off a sixth straight year as either MVP or runner-up, and Denver possesses the longest active streak of playoff appearances in the Western Conference at eight years. Tanking has not crossed this team’s mind in quite some time.

Still, the 3-2-1 reform will have ripple effects across the NBA — among them, a recontextualization of recent transactions.

Trade value on future draft picks

One widely anticipated downwind result of this new system is that the perceived trade value of future draft picks will change. First-round picks that belong specifically to the very worst teams will be less valuable than ever. But those odds have subsequently been redistributed, introducing more randomness than ever before (especially with 16 teams in the mix, instead of 14). That means more hope for more teams. Most first-rounders should therefore heighten in value, as middle-class teams will feel more inclined to keep their picks and cross their fingers.

Owning a high quantity of picks gives you a better chance at franchise-changing luck than owning one high-quality pick (or one that was previously considered high-quality). Stockpiling first-rounders in bulk is advantageous. Two teams in the West have done that especially well over the last few years, it just so happens: Oklahoma City and San Antonio.

Denver’s two most threatening adversaries in the conference have . That’s near-infinite flexibility to continue building through the draft, or to pursue upgrades on the trade market, or to pivot around the tax apron.

Meanwhile, the Nuggets are the only team in the league without a single trade-eligible future first-round pick. (The ones they do own, they’re forbidden from trading because of the Stepien Rule that requires teams to own at least one first-rounder every other year.)

Denver is allowed to trade this year’s pick (No. 26) on draft night, but the front office’s flexibility is severely limited beyond that. Only two future seconds are available to trade. Former general manager Calvin Booth made it his annual strategy to sacrifice future draft capital for immediate late first-round and early second-round talent — players he believed could be plug-and-play contributors for a championship team, such as Peyton Watson, Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett and DaRon Holmes II. Those four players combined to log 26 minutes in Denver’s first-round playoff series against the Timberwolves this year.

The Nuggets were particularly cavalier with second-rounders in the 2024 offseason, which turned out to be Booth’s last at the helm. They sacrificed 2024, 2026 and 2031 picks to move up six spots and get Holmes 22nd overall. They also traded their 2025, 2029 and 2030 seconds to salary-dump Reggie Jackson and make room on the depth chart for Russell Westbrook. Their 2027 and 2028 second-round picks were already owed to other teams at that point.

The good news: The 2027 and 2029 first-round picks that Denver traded in recent years are top-five protected, in case the Nuggets slip into one of the 16 lottery spots. The bad news: Both picks are owed to … Oklahoma City.

Lucky timing for the Spurs

Another rule being implemented: Teams cannot draft No. 1 overall in consecutive years, nor can they be awarded a top-five pick in the lottery for three consecutive years. The idea here is to dissuade teams from prolonging their rebuilds.

But unfortunately for the Nuggets and other championship contenders, it’s all happening a little too late to slow down the Spurs.

Their meteoric rise to the NBA Finals required more than one stroke of luck. After San Antonio drafted Victor Wembanyama with the No. 1 pick in 2023, it received the No. 4 pick in 2024 (Stephon Castle) and the No. 2 pick in 2025 (Dylan Harper). That would no longer be permitted under the new system. But it worked out swimmingly for the Spurs: Their trio of top-five picks combined for 50 points on 50% shooting in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals last weekend.

Fewer tanking teams

Teams at the bottom of the standings will now be incentivized to win late in the season, as they’ll want to avoid having their lottery odds relegated. This, of course, is the core principle of all these rule changes. Tanking teams got more creative this past season, even benching high scorers for the fourth quarter of close games.

The Nuggets went 23-6 against the 10 teams that missed the Play-In Tournament. Their 12-game win streak to finish the regular season included four games against those teams.

There won’t be as many “easy” wins on the schedule going forward.

But the remark was nonetheless revealing — specifically, the absence of a sentence clause offering Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon the same protection as Jokic.

The 31-year-old Serbian center is due a contract extension this summer, and all indications are that he plans to sign it. As for Denver’s other two franchise cornerstones, the future is clouded by Kroenke’s comment. Should it be taken seriously? Or was it just an easy platitude, meant to convey the urgency of the situation after a disappointing first-round playoff loss? After all, Kroenke also hinted that “running it back” with the remaining core of Denver’s 2023 championship team is a possibility.

In order to peel back the layers and truly understand how the Nuggets might proceed from here, you have to follow the money. That will dictate team officials’ offseason decisions as much as — if not more than — the fact that the Nuggets fell flat in the playoffs. The Post has already reported that at least one key player is almost guaranteed to be sacrificed this summer. As we begin exploring Denver’s trade possibilities and free-agent candidates over the next few weeks, we must start with what they have to offer — and why not one but multiple starter-level players could feasibly be gone by the time the dust settles on this offseason.

A mock offseason … minus the trades

The easiest way to illustrate the Nuggets’ dilemma is to first predict every roster decision they’re going to make, minus trades. Basically, we’re gaming out a “mock offseason” but leaving it incomplete. That should give us a rough estimate of their 2026-27 payroll and how much salary they’ll have to dump via a trade to avoid the repeater tax.

Here are the projected NBA tax thresholds for next season to keep in mind:

• Luxury tax: $201 million
• First apron: $209 million
• Second apron: $222 million

At this exact moment, the Nuggets have 10 roster spots filled and $213.8 million on the books. Even in the most aggressive version of this offseason imaginable, in which they decide to spend lavishly, they’re probably going to treat that second-apron number as a hard cap. Most NBA owners do. Alternatively, the Kroenkes might want to get under the luxury tax or at least within range of it — enough to preserve the option to shed more salary at the 2027 trade deadline (like they did this past season). That means we’re eyeing $201 million as the goal while predicting these moves. We have to locate the easiest ways to snip payroll.

Start with backup center Jonas Valanciunas, who has a non-guaranteed salary of $10 million. The Nuggets have already agreed to guarantee him $2 million of that. But it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that he won’t be in Denver next season. He might not be in the NBA at all. One major Euro League team already tried to lure him away last summer, and he’s reportedly expected to have more overseas suitors this year. Leaving the NBA behind would allow him to be closer to home (Lithuania) and get more playing time as he enters the late stages of his career.

The exit strategy here could work in one of three ways. The Nuggets could trade him to a team that’s willing to eat the remaining salary on his contract after releasing him. But that would probably cost them at least a second-round pick, and they have only three of those to spend with other salary-shedding moves to anticipate. Another option is to waive Valanciunas outright and eat the $2 million on the 2026-27 cap sheet. Or they could “waive and stretch” him, which would basically disperse his guaranteed salary over three seasons. The Nuggets would incur a modest $666,667 dead cap hit next season, still saving them $9.3 million. It seems like the most reasonable route to predict, partially because ownership shouldn’t be as worried about paying the tax in the last two seasons of stretched salary if Denver successfully ducks the repeater next year.

Another easy penny-pinching move is to pick up Jalen Pickett’s fourth-year team option. His $2.41 million salary is about $40,000 cheaper than the projected veteran minimum cap hit. Cha-ching.

Another is to keep the No. 26 pick in the draft and sign that player to a standard contract. The rookie salary scale for the 26th pick is projected to start around $3.1 million. That’s a cheap roster spot and an opportunity to fill a positional hole of Denver’s choosing, lower down on the depth chart.

The Nuggets have two restricted free agents in Peyton Watson and Spencer Jones. Jones came close but didn’t quite meet the “starter criteria” for RFAs, meaning his qualifying offer is the standard minimum instead of $5.9 million. Watson’s qualifying offer is $6.5 million, but he’ll get paid much more than that, whether it’s from Denver or someone else. It should be noted that if the Nuggets want to scare away other suitors (Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Chicago), they’ll probably want to telegraph their intent and ability to match offer sheets in advance. They can only do that by agreeing to a significant salary-shedding trade and clearing their books before free agency — a brutal tightrope to walk with no guarantee that Watson doesn’t still get a lucrative offer regardless. Point being: Our order of operations in this simulation is not meant to be accurate.

Watson checks a lot of boxes for the Nuggets after they felt like they were at a loss for secondary ball-handling and athleticism against Minnesota. Let’s just say restricted free agency works out perfectly, with Jones taking his qualifying offer and Watson getting squeezed a bit in negotiations. We’ll pencil him in for an ascending deal that starts at $20 million next season and has an average annual value between that and $25 million. This would be a team-friendly outcome that still acknowledges and validates Watson’s breakout year.

In summary, here are the (hypothetical) moves:

• Waive and stretch Jonas Valanciunas
• Pick up Jalen Pickett’s team option
• Keep the 26th pick in the draft
• Re-sign Spencer Jones at the minimum
• Re-sign Peyton Watson to an ascending deal starting at $20 million

This adds up to a payroll just shy of $230 million, with 12 roster spots occupied. Teams are required to carry at least 14 players on the 15-man roster. We saw the Nuggets leave the 15th vacant for most of last season. It seems likely that they’ll want to repeat that strategy to help with their cap crunch. But even if they do, they’re left with $29 million to cut and two more roster spots to fill.

Ideally, part of the solution is to find a trade that achieves both goals by breaking down a single large salary into multiple smaller ones. But keep in mind that it can be difficult to pull off in the NBA’s apron era, when there are usually more teams trying to shed money than welcome more of it.

Which players can the Nuggets trade?

Outside of Jokic (and Valanciunas), here are Denver’s bulkiest 2026-27 salaries:

• Jamal Murray: $50.1 million, three years remaining
• Aaron Gordon: $32 million, three years remaining
• Cam Johnson: $23.1 million, one year remaining
• Christian Braun: $21.6 million, five years remaining
• Zeke Nnaji: $7.5 million, two years remaining

The reality is that neither Braun nor Nnaji can be the centerpiece of a trade. Now that Nnaji is halfway through his extension with a descending salary against an increasing cap, the Nuggets might be able to get off his contract by attaching him to a better player or by intervening in a random trade between other teams that need salary filler to complete the deal. (Keep an eye on the Giannis Antetokounmpo sweepstakes — Denver could look to get involved as a fourth or fifth party, depending on how the trade landscape develops for Milwaukee’s superstar.)

Or the Nuggets could get rid of Nnaji in a straight-up salary-dump trade if they can convince someone to take second-round picks or a future first-round swap along with his contract.

Braun’s salary and term are probably both too daunting a commitment to say the same for him. Other teams just aren’t going to be sold on the 25-year-old guard right now. His shooting and handles are both under the microscope. The Nuggets can explore the market and offer to mortgage what’s left of their future draft pick pool, but they’ll have a hard time finding any takers.

That leaves you with Murray, Gordon and Johnson as the three main options who are:

1. Good enough to draw interest from other teams and become a primary trade chip.
2. Paid enough to help the Nuggets unload substantial salary in a trade.

Johnson is probably the easiest of the three to move because he’s on an expiring contract next season. In other words, he’s a low-risk commitment. Contenders and tankers alike could be swayed to take the 43% outside shooter, and Denver might even be able to get back some future draft capital. The problem is that his value might also be somewhat diluted by Denver’s intentions to dump salary. You have to view “getting off of Player X’s contract” as part of the return when evaluating this type of trade.

Now, consider that even if the Nuggets are able to reduce their payroll by most of Johnson’s $23 million salary, they would ���پ�������be a few million over the tax.

Sacrificing him isn’t enough. The math simply doesn’t add up. If you completely ignore NBA trade rules and other teams’ priorities, and if you subtract Johnson’s salary and Nnaji’s from $230 million without adding a single cent back, you still end up around $199.5 million with four open spots. Four veteran minimum free agents later, you’re paying $209.3 million for a roster with no salaries between $5 million and $21 million.

If the financial goal is merely to avoid the $222 million second apron, deciding between Johnson and Watson should suffice.

But the only way to actually duck the repeater tax, barring a miracle of front-office work by Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer, is to dump Johnson and lose another valuable player. Maybe that means letting Watson go in free agency, or maybe that means trading Murray or Gordon.

Either way, it’s a financial dilemma that illuminates the meaning behind Kroenke’s message.

If the Nuggets “run it back” with their three best players, but they also want to evade the tax, the cost might be both Watson and Johnson — leaving them with a shallower, older version of the team that just lost in the first round.

If they truly want to prioritize youth, athleticism and defense at all costs (well, except for the tax), they might be sacrificing two starters to keep Watson — even at a relatively low-end salary projection, as we’ve outlined.

Neither option would be encouraging for the team’s championship aspirations in a league ruled by Oklahoma City and San Antonio.

And neither option would be a flattering look for Stan Kroenke, .

The counterpoint from ownership would be that two consecutive years out of the tax can set Denver up for three seasons of aggressive spending that coincide with the term of Jokic’s next contract. And that a first-round exit from the 2026 playoffs revealed the Nuggets are overdue for a reset of the core.

A reasonable rebuttal would be that next season is always the most important season when a player like Jokic is in his prime — and possibly nearing the end of it.

Top priority: Will Nikola Jokic sign contract extension?

All offseason talk has to start here, with arguably the most important person in the Denver sports landscape. Jokic declined a supermax extension from the Nuggets last July, with the mutual understanding that a more lucrative version of the same offer would still be on the table a year later.

The 31-year-old center has at least one more year remaining on his current supermax contract, with a player option for 2027-28. Signing an extension last summer when he first became eligible would have added three years and an estimated $207 million to the current deal. By waiting for this offseason, he’s able to tack on an additional $80 million (approximately) for a fourth year.

Speculation about Jokic’s future inevitably followed his decision to delay contract talks, as is often the case when a superstar turns down an extension. That chatter will only be amplified by an early playoff exit. But Jokic has given no indication that he wants to play anywhere other than Denver, and team sources have been confident dating back to last year that he’ll ultimately sign the extension.

“My plan is to be Nuggets forever,” he said at preseason media day last September. In a recent , he elaborated in his native language that he has found peace in Denver and covets his “organic” championship with the Nuggets, even if they never win another. All signs point to him following in the footsteps of single-franchise modern stars like Kobe Bryant and Dirk Nowitzki.

If one thing is clear, it’s that the Nuggets have a high floor as long as Jokic is on the court. They’ve won 50 or more regular-season games in four consecutive years. They sell out Ball Arena nightly. They have the longest active streak of playoff appearances in the Western Conference.

It’s the ceiling of a team built around him that’s in question now more than ever, especially as he potentially enters the post-MVP stage of his career.

Which Nuggets players are under contract in 2026-27?

The Nuggets tentatively have 10 players under contract for the 2026-27 season, with somewhere between $203.4 million and $213.8 million in salary payroll, depending on what they do with team options and non-guaranteed salary.

The NBA was reportedly projecting a $165 million salary cap as of March, with the luxury tax line estimated at $201 million, the first apron threshold at $209 million and the second apron at $222 million. Because the Nuggets have at least four roster spots to fill aside from the money already on the books, they’re currently projected as a second apron team. They’re widely expected to make moves allowing them avoid that threshold, and possibly others.

They finished the 2025-26 season with the 11th-most expensive payroll in the league: $200.7 million in cap allocations. But it’s notable that they also made a concerted effort to evade the luxury tax at the trade deadline, salary-dumping Hunter Tyson to Brooklyn and waiting out an injury to Spencer Jones before converting his two-way contract to a standard NBA deal. That left them with enough wiggle room to sign Tyus Jones with their 15th roster spot and stay below the tax. They had spent most of the season carrying only 14 players on the 15-man active roster. Both Joneses — Spencer and Tyus — were paid prorated minimum salaries.

Why is that relevant to this summer? Well, before 2025-26, the Kroenkes had paid the luxury tax three consecutive years — meaning that to finish either this season or next season with a payroll exceeding that threshold would trigger what’s known as the repeater tax. It’s basically a more severe tax penalty imposed on teams based on five-year windows, incentivizing owners not to spend excessively over the salary cap for prolonged periods. A team pays the repeater if it finishes a season in luxury tax territory after having also done so in three of the previous four seasons.

For the Nuggets to dodge it, they had to finish 2025-26 out of the tax, and they’ll have to do the same in 2026-27.

Two consecutive years out of the tax would reset their repeater clock, so to speak, allowing them to be a luxury tax team for another three consecutive years from 2027-28 through 2029-30 without paying the additional penalties.

The problem with that approach, of course, is that Jokic has enjoyed one of the most incredible primes of any career in NBA history, and he could be nearing the end of that prime this year and next. There’s no guarantee he’ll be at the peak of his powers anymore from 2028-30. The same goes for Jamal Murray, who just had a career year. He turns 30 next February.

Penny-pinching was achievable with relatively inconsequential basketball moves this year. That’s not the case next season. New contracts are going into effect for starting power forward Aaron Gordon and shooting guard Christian Braun. And that’s before addressing Peyton Watson’s potential raise. (More on that soon.) If the Kroenkes’ top priority is to dodge the repeater tax, their actions this summer will make that obvious; multiple salary-shedding moves would be required to pull it off.

And now that Denver has dramatically underperformed in the playoffs, the door is cracked open for wholesale changes anyway. The team did not exactly give ownership a firm reason to believe that paying the repeater next year would be worth it.

Here’s a look at the cap table.

Salary figures via , verified by team source | * Last year of contract is non-guaranteed or contingent upon team option | + Last year of contract is contingent on player option

Who has a contract option or a non-guaranteed salary?

Back in November, the Nuggets and backup center Jonas Valanciunas quietly agreed to restructure the third and final year of his contract, league sources told The Post. His full $10 million salary was previously non-guaranteed. Under the amended deal, Valanciunas is owed at least $2 million of his salary next season, in exchange for his 2026 guarantee date being pushed back from June 29 to July 8. This provides Denver with more flexibility to survey the free-agent market and evaluate potential trades before the deadline to release Valanciunas or guarantee his full salary. The new “league year” begins July 1.

Reserve point guard Jalen Pickett has a team option on the last year of his rookie-scale contract. He hasn’t been a consistent presence in Denver’s rotation since he was drafted with the 32nd pick in 2023, but the Nuggets should be incentivized to pick up the option and keep him around because they need cheap cap hits (like his $2.4 million) to fill out the back end of their roster.

Which Nuggets players are free agents?

Tim Hardaway Jr., Bruce Brown and Tyus Jones will be unrestricted free agents. Peyton Watson and Spencer Jones will be restricted free agents.

All three UFAs were in Denver on veteran minimum salaries. Hardaway will be the most difficult to retain after a 40.7% 3-point shooting season that earned him a finalist nod for NBA Sixth Man of the Year. “I think it’s the best contract in the league right now,” Aaron Gordon said this month. If the 33-year-old Hardaway wants one more significant payday in his playing career, the Nuggets might be out of luck. They’ll have a better chance to affordably re-sign Brown, a locker room staple who has made it no secret how much he loves Denver.

Watson’s future is one of the biggest unknowns in the league this offseason. He’s due for his second NBA contract after he and the Nuggets didn’t come to an extension agreement before the season — Denver instead prioritized Braun, who signed a five-year, $125 million deal in October.

Watson went on to have a breakout fourth year. He averaged 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 54 games, shooting 49.1% from the floor and 41.1% from 3-point range. He did most of his scoring in January, when Jokic was injured and the Nuggets desperately needed secondary shot creators to step up. Shortly after Jokic returned, Watson suffered a right hamstring strain and never got to settle back in to his smaller bench role. With him out of the picture late in the season, the Nuggets also never got to fully test out how his improving talent with the ball could be integrated into their normal system.

It leaves many questions unanswered. How trustworthy was that one month? Was it a large enough sample size to meaningfully impact his financial value? How much cap space is Denver willing to commit to another role player while also attempting to lower its overall payroll? The Nuggets are prepared to pursue other corresponding moves in order to retain Watson, league sources have told The Post. But that doesn’t automatically mean they’ll match any number the 23-year-old is offered.

Restricted free agency is traditionally a process that favors the incumbent team, but the Nuggets’ finances will make this fascinating. After they extend a qualifying offer, Watson’s path to joining a new team will require him to sign an offer sheet, the terms of which Denver has the opportunity to match. The Nets, Bulls and Lakers are cap-space teams expected to show interest, league sources told The Post this season. Denver might have to decide where to draw a line in the sand if Watson has enthusiastic suitors. Is the number more or less than Braun’s average annual value of $25 million? Upwards of $30 million per year could get into uncomfortable territory.

Will the Nuggets trade key players?

If the Nuggets end up keeping Watson, it will almost definitely involve at least one significant sacrifice from the starting lineup. Three players are set to make between $21 million and $32 million next season: Gordon, Braun and Johnson.

Playoff basketball is informative. Failure this year was surprisingly illuminating. Braun and Johnson both struggled against Minnesota, while Gordon’s recurring soft tissue injury woes emerged again as a pivotal storyline in the first-round series.

Johnson is widely considered the most likely starter to go if Watson returns. His $23 million expiring salary is a reasonable, low-risk contract for a 6-foot-8 wing who shot 43% from 3-point range this season. He could fill a need for several other contenders that struggled with shooting, spacing and secondary ball-handling this year. (It’s worth noting that Denver could sorely miss those attributes.) In Brooklyn, he also showed his ability to assume a larger role on a tanking team. Point being: Denver could theoretically engage a variety of teams — good, bad and ugly — to find value for him. His impressive finish to the playoffs could give the front office pause, however. Even while his 3-pointer wasn’t falling for most of the Minnesota series, Johnson was the team’s third-leading scorer, capped by a 27-point Game 6.

Braun is coming off a disappointing fourth season that was characterized by a brutal ankle injury. This was the last year of his rookie-scale contract, making $4.9 million. His raise is about to go into effect. He’s under contract longer than anyone else on the roster. He had Jokic’s endorsement when the Nuggets extended him, according to a league source. If they want to trade him now, it would be bad business, in all likelihood. This is the nadir of his value. They would probably have to attach other assets to get out of his contract (and they are already short on future draft picks). And they would essentially be treating him as a sunk cost, one injury-hampered year removed from him being a candidate for NBA Most Improved Player. He can’t be ruled out as a trade candidate this offseason after his poor performance in the playoffs, but logic says the more productive path forward with him is to exercise patience and hope he can return to his 2024-25 form.

Gordon is the most uncomfortable option to consider because his value to the team is bordering on priceless. But his soft tissue durability, while no fault of his own, has become a major problem — enough that the Nuggets’ brain trust will have to at least discuss whether it makes sense to move on from the fan favorite. He has missed 77 regular-season games in the last two years. He was limited or out by the end of the playoffs in both 2025 and 2026. It’s increasingly clear that without him, Denver isn’t a championship-caliber team. The risk of keeping him as he ages into his 30s is that his body might simply be unable to withstand two consecutive months of basketball. The risk of trading him is that Denver is unlikely to ever find a more perfect fit for Jokic in the frontcourt. It’s one of the biggest roster-building catch-22s in the NBA going forward.

After the way Denver was eliminated, Murray’s name is also worth mentioning here as a wild-card  possibility. He struggled to get separation from Jaden McDaniels and establish a rhythm throughout the Minnesota series, while the Timberwolves hunted him on defense. Jokic doubled down on his confidence in the tandem after Game 6. Denver’s new front office has treated Murray as a franchise player, gauging his opinion on certain decisions (in addition to Jokic’s). But the argument for trading the 29-year-old guard now is that an opportunity has arrived to “sell high” if the Nuggets believe they can no longer win a title while fighting against the defensive deficiencies of both Jokic and Murray. Like trading Gordon, moving Murray would be a cold-hearted move. But nothing can be completely ruled out after a team with championship hopes crashed out in the first round.

It also must be noted that Denver doesn’t �󲹱�����to trade anyone to keep Watson. There are no rules requiring it. Only luxury tax bills.

How many draft picks do the Nuggets have in 2026?

The Nuggets possess two picks in the upcoming NBA draft: 26th (their own pick) and 49th (via Atlanta). Late second-round picks typically amount to nothing. The first-rounder is an important asset, however. With so many roster spots open and so little financial wiggle room, the Nuggets are likely to keep the pick and assess their roster needs; a player drafted in the 20s getting paid on the rookie salary scale will have a smaller cap hit than a player signed to the veteran minimum.

If Denver does keep the pick, it’ll be the first one used by lead executives Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer in their regime, which started last summer.

If they want to trade the pick, they’re allowed to do so on draft night. None of Denver’s future firsts are currently eligible to be traded.

They’ve been playing in a different NBA. Amid rising average point differentials and a record number of 30-point routs — symptoms of the tanking epidemic — the Nuggets have been arguably the most entertaining team to watch any given night.

Maybe it’s their commitment to beautiful offense paired with their neglect of defense during the regular-season grind, resulting in a tendency to trade buckets. Maybe it’s their propensity for playing up or down to their opponent’s level — human nature for a veteran team that has tasted so much playoff success. (Denver is soon to begin its 17th playoff series in an eight-year stretch.)

Whatever the case, the Nuggets have been involved in several “game of the year” candidates. They’ve played 45 games decided by single digits, 42 involving clutch time, 20 decided by one score and nine that went to overtime.

As they wrap up Sunday in San Antonio, it feels only right to put a bow on this rollercoaster of a regular season by ranking Denver’s craziest games. What started as a top-10 list ended up expanding to 15. These were the highlights and lowlights of 2025-26.

15. Nuggets 134, Hawks 133, Dec. 5, Atlanta

Nikola Jokic recently chose “inconsistent” as the word to describe his season. This wacky night in Atlanta captured all the dramatic fluctuations, making it the perfect place to begin this countdown. Jokic missed 11 of his 13 shots in the first half. He played like a “sissy,” he said afterward. He decided at halftime that “if we were going to lose, at least I’m gonna give a fight.” He proceeded to make 11 of 13 shots in the second half, scoring 30 of his 40 points to lead Denver’s third-largest comeback win in franchise history (down 23). The weirdest part: The Nuggets also went on a 20-0 run without him on the court. In the last six years dating back to Jokic’s first MVP season, they’re 9-79 when they lose his minutes by more than five points (playoffs included). This was the worst plus-minus game of his entire prime (minus-15) that they’ve have won.

14. Mavericks 131, Nuggets 130, Dec. 23, Dallas

In hindsight, David Adelman has cited the final sequence of this game as one of his favorite moments of the season. Playing a two-man game with Jamal Murray, Jokic caught a pass at the free-throw line and stepped through the paint. As he left his feet, it appeared he was about to attempt a game-winning floater. Instead, he clocked the five — yes, all five — defenders collapsing to him in the lane and whipped a pass to Peyton Watson in the weak-side corner. It was a wide-open 3-point attempt at the buzzer. Watson missed it. Adelman adamantly defended Jokic’s split-second decision, which was scrutinized even by the first-year coach’s friends. Less than a month later, Watson earned Western Conference Player of the Week honors. His breakout season as a scorer has been pivotal for Denver. Before any of that, he had a vote of trust from his team’s best player.

13. Nuggets 102, Bucks 100, Jan. 23, Milwaukee

The Nuggets stumbled out of Milwaukee with an unlikely win that probably contributed to escalating tensions between Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks before the trade deadline. Aaron Gordon was Denver’s only starter available that night, and he reinjured his hamstring before halftime, leaving the team without seven rotation players as it tried to protect a 23-point lead in the fourth quarter. Antetokounmpo led his hapless team on a 34-13 run, only to limp off with a calf strain with 34 seconds left. How did the Nuggets hold on? “Time ran out,” Adelman said bluntly.

12. Pistons 109, Nuggets 107, Jan. 27, Denver

You will probably never see a basketball game end like this again: The Pistons foul Murray in the act of shooting �ٷɾ�������on desperate game-tying 3-point attempts in the last 3.5 seconds, offering Denver a lifeline. And both times, an 89% foul shooter fails to capitalize, missing one of his three free throws. Murray’s teammates were quick to forgive him after an outstanding month in which he led Denver without Jokic in the lineup. He was hard on himself. “If I could just make a free throw, maybe hit rim in the first half,” he said, “it would be lovely.”

11. Nuggets 128, Rockets 125 (OT), Dec. 15, Denver

Perhaps the most consequential officiating moment of Denver’s season occurred with 2.3 seconds left in regulation, when the Nuggets trailed by one and needed to score on a last-ditch sideline inbound play. Tim Hardaway Jr. fell before the ball was passed in, earning a whistle for a dead-ball foul. Replay review determined that he had just barely tripped over the shin of Rockets’ wing Amen Thompson, a soft letter-of-the-law foul that resulted in an automatic free throw. “Most poorly officiated game I’ve seen in a long time,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said afterward. “Two (of the refs) have no business being out there, and the crew chief (Zach Zarba) was acting starstruck.” Alperen Sengun missed a game-tying 3-pointer late in overtime, and Denver held on despite Jokic fouling out with 90 seconds left. If Hardaway hadn’t sold the call, the playoff seeding picture from third to fifth could look different.

10. Nuggets 137, Trail Blazers 132 (OT), April 6, Denver

The Nuggets provided the highlight of their recent 11-game win streak with a rousing 16-point comeback in the last nine minutes of regulation to beat the Blazers, who had one of the luckiest shooting performances in recent NBA history. Coming into Denver, they ranked 29th in the league in 3-point percentage with an 80-game sample as evidence of their inefficiency. Denver’s game plan was to close out short and be the second to leave the ground. Portland went 25 for 52 from deep. It went to waste.

9. Nuggets 106, Raptors 103, Dec. 31, Toronto

Behold, a war of attrition for the ages. This game began as Denver’s first without Jokic, who had hyperextended his knee two nights earlier. By the end, the Nuggets needed a miracle. Backup center Jonas Valanciunas joined Jokic in the infirmary after suffering an injury in the third quarter. It left Denver without a traditional five-man for multiple weeks. DaRon Holmes II was suddenly playing his first career minutes outside of garbage time. In a tight road game. Against a playoff team. Denver and Toronto combined to shoot a whopping 6 for 33 in the last eight and a half minutes. It ended in the most fitting and most ironic way possible: Bruce Brown missed two consecutive free throws with 2.7 seconds left when he only needed one to clinch the game, and the Raptors went the length of the floor off the rebound to hit an incredible buzzer-beating 3-pointer. Just as it seemed the game was going to stretch into 2026, it turned out the ball was still on Brandon Ingram’s fingertips when the clock struck midnight. The one shot that went in for Toronto didn’t count, and Denver had pulled off a tone-setting win for life without Jokic.

8. Knicks 134, Nuggets 127 (2OT), Feb. 4, New York

This one will be remembered for Jokic playing 44 minutes on the second night of a back-to-back, less than a week after returning from his injury. He had already blown past his minutes restriction by the end of regulation at Madison Square Garden. By then, Adelman was in too deep. “There was an ‘I don’t care’ factor once it got to overtime,” he said after the loss. Christian Braun drew a foul at the buzzer of OT and buried two clutch free throws to force a second, but all that did in the end was add to Jokic’s exorbitant playing time. “That was a really fun game,” Jamal Murray said. So fun that he didn’t even notice when Peyton Watson limped off with a hamstring injury that sidelined him for six weeks.

7. Thunder 127, Nuggets 121 (OT), Feb. 27, Oklahoma City

Joker v. Dort. The flagrant foul that ignited a rivalry and the “necessary reaction” . Jokic’s death stare was an instant classic. The game was pretty spectacular, too. But NBA fans years from now might not even remember it went to overtime.

6. Warriors 137, Nuggets 131 (OT), Oct. 23, San Francisco

At its core, this was a legendary duel between Steph Curry and … Aaron Gordon? Fun fact: AG is the only player in Nuggets history to ever average 50 points per game at any point in a season. He broke Alex English’s franchise scoring record in a season opener (47), going 10 for 11 from 3-point range in one of the most mesmerizing heat checks you’ll ever see by a role player. But opening night was the worst possible time to visit Golden State, before injuries took their toll on a geriatric Warriors team. Curry scored their last 13 points of regulation, punctuated by a ridiculous game-tying 35-footer. A game like this was appropriate foreshadowing for the type of season that was in store. It’s stupid that it’s this low on the list.

5. Nuggets 136, Spurs 134 (OT), April 4, Denver

An 11-point Nuggets comeback in the fourth quarter, a pair of magical Jokic shots in the last minute of overtime and, in general, the most epic battle yet between Jokic and Victor Wembanyama. This was hooping of the highest order, quite possibly the best game of the NBA season if not the craziest.

4. Thunder 129, Nuggets 126, March 9, Oklahoma City

It was basketball serendipity that Denver and OKC had a rematch slated 10 days after the incident between Jokic and Dort. Naturally, that rematch became perhaps the most anticipated game of Denver’s season, aided by the bad blood that continued to linger in public comments made by the Nuggets. Dort eventually apologized, and the whole saga finally simmered. But the game still lived up to the hype. Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander combined to score 15 points in the last 73 seconds of this MVP referendum, which ended with a Denver miracle wiped out. Gilgeous-Alexander seemingly sealed the win for OKC when he buried a 3-pointer to go up four with 12 seconds left. But the Nuggets answered with a brilliant inbound play design to get Jokic a quick shot. Jaylin Williams plowed through a screening Murray as Jokic drained a triple, enabling the Nuggets to tie it with a fortuitous 4-point play. Then SGA got the last word.

3. Lakers 127, Nuggets 125 (OT), March 14, Los Angeles

Denver’s misfortune in clutch time reached a nadir in Los Angeles, where Austin Reaves rebounded his own intentionally missed free throw to force overtime. It was the wildest single play of this Nuggets season, and they were on the wrong end of it. They were also helpless to prevent Luka Doncic from hitting a game-winner in the last second of OT. Denver had a foul to give on the play, but Spencer Jones didn’t use it. His emergence has been a breath of fresh air for the Nuggets this season. This was a tough learning moment for the young wing. Forgotten in all the chaos of the Reaves play: Jokic threw one of his best passes of the year to find Hardaway for what should have been the game-winning shot in regulation.

2. Nuggets 142, Timberwolves 138 (OT), Dec. 25, Denver

Christmas classic. Just an absolutely bonkers rivalry game. The Nuggets led 106-91 with five minutes to go and 113-107 with 35 seconds. They trailed 124-115 with three minutes left in overtime. There was Anthony Edwards brashly asking Watson if the Nuggets planned to foul up three at the end of regulation, before draining an incredible shot to force overtime. Then there was Jokic scoring an NBA record 18 points in the extra period to fuel Denver’s comeback. He finished the game with 56 points, 16 rebounds and 15 assists, matching the second-highest scoring game of his career. “They’re gonna show this game (on TV) 20 years from now,” Adelman said, “and I’ll crack open a beer and watch it.” How about another four to seven of those games later this month? Nuggets fans might prefer a cigarette.

1. Nuggets 125, 76ers 124 (OT), Jan. 5, Philadelphia

Being in the arena for this felt like watching a No. 15 seed in the NCAA Tournament pour its heart out to compete with a No. 2 seed. Every minute the game stays close, the more you’re convinced the upset might actually be possible. Denver was missing seven rotation players, all five starters, both centers. It was the second game of a back-to-back near the end of the longest road trip of the season. It was Jalen Pickett, Zeke Nnaji and Hunter Tyson vs. Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George. It was 98-89 Sixers early in the fourth quarter. In overtime, it was Philly ball with a one-point lead and a six-second clock differential. The Nuggets shocked the NBA world with their defense, with a Bruce Brown fast break and with a tip from the supercomputer mind of Jokic, a bystander on the bench. The team went on to finish 10-6 in a month without Jokic. No other regular-season moment could replicate the emotions of this win.

Three of the No. 1 seeds in the 2026 NCAA Tournament were schools attended by a current Nuggets player. March Madness had arrived with plenty of championship ambition inside Ball Arena.

“I think they’ll win,” Aaron Gordon said when asked about his former team, Arizona, which entered the tournament with a 32-2 record. “They’ve got really good guards. Got some good wings. Got some rebounding. They’ve lost  already, you know what I mean? So they’re not going into the first round of the tournament with the undefeated pressure. So they’ve got a good chance of winning.”

“AG doesn’t even watch Arizona,” Nuggets guard Christian Braun retorted. “Go ask AG to name three players on the team.”

Braun, as it happened, was the primary source of that trash talk. A proud and occasionally obnoxious Kansas alum, he’s one of the most avid college basketball followers on Denver’s roster. On Monday, he was already looking ahead to a potential second-round matchup between Kansas and St. John’s, claiming that “we have the best coach in the world” in Bill Self, “so I don’t really doubt us.”

When Bruce Brown was asked for his thoughts on Miami’s first-round draw against Missouri the next night, Braun interrupted with his: “They’ve got the weakest team in the NCAA,” he said, despite his mother having played at Mizzou. “You should beat Missouri.”

“I don’t know anything about Mizzou,” Brown murmured to his teammate. “I don’t watch —”

“Nobody does,” a deadpan Braun fired back. “Nobody watches them.”

(It bears mentioning that by this point, his insults seemed to be directed at the inquiring #MizzouMade Nuggets beat writer.)

Not everyone in the NBA keeps track of their college team quite as fervently as Braun — Jamal Murray has been known to lose track of who’s left by the Final Four — but March Madness does have a tendency to capture the attention of the basketball world, even for those who are generally locked in on just the pros.

The Nuggets have a particularly robust list of alma maters on the current team. They recently added another blueblood to that list when they signed Final Four hero Tyus Jones off the buyout market. Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, Arizona, Gonzaga and Michigan are among the schools now represented on Denver’s roster.

In celebration of this year’s tournament, The Denver Post reassembled that roster into a new hierarchy based only on the success of each player’s college hoops career — an All-NCAA Nuggets starting lineup and second unit, if you will. (Sorry, Nikola Jokic. Looks like you’re the first roster cut.)

There was no perfect way to make some of these decisions, especially given Denver’s surplus of prolific college guards and shortage of bigs. It becomes kind of difficult to sort out a frontcourt when the real-life Nuggets’ top two centers spent their developmental years playing for European clubs.

But we tried anyway. Ultimately, the final decisions skewed in favor of players who:

A) contributed to successful NCAA Tournament teams.

B) enjoyed longer, more established college careers.

Here goes nothing.

Starters

�ʳ�:��Tyus Jones, Duke (2014-15)

����:��Tim Hardaway Jr., Michigan (2010-13)

����:��Christian Braun, Kansas (2019-22)

�ʹ�:��Cam Johnson, Pittsburgh/North Carolina (2014-19)

��:��DaRon Holmes II, Dayton (2021-24)

Jones is the only “one-and-done” player to make the starting five. How can you leave him out? He was named NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player in 2015 after taking over the national championship game. His 23 points led Duke’s comeback from down nine with 12 minutes to go against Wisconsin. The Blue Devils have fielded several super-teams since 2015, but that remains their last championship squad.

Braun was also part of a memorable NCAA title game in 2022, when his 12-point double-double helped the Jayhawks erase a 15-point halftime deficit against North Carolina. For Braun, that was the culmination of a three-year, 101-game career at Kansas.

Hardaway had a similar career arc at Michigan, where he quickly earned a starting role under John Beilein and eventually co-starred with Trey Burke on a 2011-12 team that won the regular-season conference title and on a 2012-13 team that reached the championship game. Hardaway was a First-Team All-Big 10 selection that year. The Wolverines may have fallen short against No. 1 overall seed Louisville, but is one of the enduring moments from an awesome game.

Only three current Nuggets while in college. Holmes earned Second Team honors his third and final year at Dayton, when he led the Atlantic 10 in points (20.4) and rebounds (8.5) while averaging 2.1 blocks and shooting 39% from three. It’s perhaps the best individual college season anyone on Denver’s roster has had. Holmes led the Flyers to a No. 7 seed and an NCAA Tournament win.

Johnson remains an avid fan of his Tar Heels, which could cause some chemistry issues with Jones in this unit. But if Holmes is the five, you can’t have a four-guard lineup. The pride of Duke and Carolina will have to sort out their differences. Johnson spent the last two seasons of college in Chapel Hill. As a fifth-year senior, he led UNC to a No. 1 seed and a Sweet 16 appearance, making First Team All-ACC and leading all power conference players in 3-point percentage (45.7%). He shot 40.5% from deep across his career, scoring 1,514 points between his two schools.

Bench

�ʳ�:��Jalen Pickett, Siena/Penn State (2018-23)

����:��Jamal Murray, Kentucky (2015-16)

����:��Julian Strawther, Gonzaga (2020-23)

�ʹ�:��Aaron Gordon, Arizona (2013-14)

��:��Zeke Nnaji, Arizona (2019-20)

Pickett and Murray are going to have to be high-usage early subs for the All-NCAA Nuggets. They deserve to be starters, but we’re not playing completely position-less basketball here. Although Murray’s lone season at Kentucky ended early in March, he was still a 20-point-per-game lottery pick and a Third-Team AP All-American alongside Tyler Ulis.

Pickett was a delightful college point guard to watch. Like Holmes, he was a Second-Team All-American for a non-blueblood program. He flirted with a triple-double in an NCAA Tournament win for Penn State, amassing 19 points, seven boards and eight assists. He had a 40-point game at both of his schools. Long live “Booty Ball.”

If you were to edit together a “One Shining Moment” video of the Nuggets’ best March Madness highlights, Strawther’s game-winning shot in the Sweet 16 would probably be the main feature. “Down one, to shoot it from the logo, it was a questionable shot,” he admitted to The Denver Post when reflecting on it a couple of years later. Nonetheless, his 35-footer cemented another March classic between Gonzaga and UCLA. When he was a freshman, Strawther also rode the bench for a Gonzaga squad that lost to Baylor in the championship game.

A pair of one-and-done Arizona Wildcats will fill out Denver’s frontcourt. Gordon and Nnaji were both named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year in their brief college careers. They were both First-Team All-Pac-12. Gordon’s team fell one point short of a trip to the Final Four.

Honorable mentions

Props to two-way guard KJ Simpson for his first-round game-winner for Colorado a couple of years ago. Also to Brown (Miami) and Curtis Jones (Iowa State), both of whom made multiple NCAA Tournaments. Again, this backcourt is cutthroat.

Water boy

The All-NCAA Nuggets can probably spare Jokic a spot behind the bench. Certainly not on the court. You expect a 41st overall pick to play?

They needed only remember their last matchup with the 76ers, when the roles were reversed — when Denver’s entire starting five was absent and Philly’s “Big Three” was fully intact. It was back in January, and Jalen Pickett, Hunter Tyson and Zeke Nnaji prevailed over Tyrese Maxey, Paul George and Joel Embiid in a sentimental shocker. Now, Justin Edwards, Dalen Terry and Adem Bona were trying to return the favor.

“They’re dangerous,” coach David Adelman said before opening tip, “because when other guys are out like that, the green light is so bright.”

The Nuggets never allowed those memories to creep back in after the game started. With a 124-96 rout, they swept the season series against Philadelphia and improved to 17-12 against the Eastern Conference this year. Toronto is Denver’s last remaining East opponent on the schedule.

Why Nikola Jokic, Nuggets maintain they’ve played good basketball recently. Even without wins to show for it.

Playing a subdued 25 minutes before a back-to-back Wednesday in Memphis, Nikola Jokic scored a season-low eight points, easily short of his previous minimum (14). He was content to facilitate Denver to a lopsided win instead, piling up 14 assists. Christian Braun was the team's leading scorer with 22 points on nine shots to celebrate his bobblehead being given away to ticketed fans. He also contributed five rebounds, three assists and a steal in his 27 minutes, the latest display of his reinvigorated health near the end of a season plagued by injury.

Offensively, the Nuggets (42-27) played with pace and cruised to a 30-point first-half lead with remarkably balanced output. Cam Johnson didn't miss a 3-pointer en route to 18 points. He's 55% from deep in the last four games, three of which Denver has won.

Jamal Murray bounced back from one of the worst games of his career with an understated 12 points, six boards and four assists. Aaron Gordon matched him in scoring and helped to spearhead a strong defensive effort from his team. Bruce Brown led an impressive night for the bench with 12 points. Braun was the game's only 20-point scorer for either team.

It was all in limited playing time on a night the Nuggets needed to take it easy. Their visit to Memphis wasn't supposed to be on the schedule, but it got sandwiched into the middle of their homestand in January after a blizzard postponed the original game. Last week, Denver benefitted from a rout of the Rockets under similar circumstances; starters were rested going into a back-to-back at San Antonio, enabling a second wind against the Spurs and a 20-point comeback victory.

Adelman said Gordon's status for Memphis was unclear, but he conceded that if it was up to him, Gordon would play.

For the 76ers, Tuesday was a collision of unfortunate events. Their All-NBA point guard Maxey is out with a finger injury. George remains suspended after testing positive for a banned substance in January. Embiid is nearing a return from an abdominal injury, but he hadn't been cleared yet in time to revive the battle of MVP centers. It was the sixth consecutive game in Denver that he's missed, a streak dating back to 2019 that has become something of an afterthought the last two years amid his declining overall availability.

Still, the Philadelphia big man was treated to a chorus of boos when he emerged from the tunnel early in the second half. One sign in the Ball Arena lower bowl taunted him with a lousy knock-knock joke. (Who's there? Not Embiid.) Bona and Andre Drummond comprised Nick Nurse's center rotation instead.

Jokic and the shooters and cutters around him instantly dismantled Nurse's game plan. Aaron Gordon and Braun reaped the rewards of their center's surgical passing and combined for 19 early points. The Nuggets scored 20 off eight Jokic assists in the first nine minutes, confidently assembling a 31-16 lead.

Then Jokic picked up two fouls and a technical in a five-second span, sending him to a premature seat on the bench. If the 76ers were going to have a window into upset territory, it was going to be now. But the Nuggets' bench padded the lead this time, rather than letting it slip away. Backup center Jonas Valanciunas, who had struggled lately in high-stakes games, went for eight points and nine rebounds to anchor Adelman's reserve lineups. He was a plus-15 in 18 minutes.

It’s like they never left — the cold, lonely, unnerving non-Nikola Jokic minutes.

They haven’t been as much of an existential crisis as usual throughout this season. In fact, the Nuggets persevered through a full month of non-Jokic minutes to great effect in January. But just as Jokic is starting to feel like himself again, the second unit that plays behind him is nosediving.

“My body feels really good,” Jokic said Sunday. “I think I’m in shape. I think I’m back (like) before the injury, in that kind of shape. I feel really good out there.”

The Nuggets outscored Oklahoma City and Minnesota by a combined 19 points when he was on the court in a pair of pivotal games this weekend. They were outscored by 34 combined points in the 17 minutes he spent on the bench.

Just like old times.

“It’s just something that we have to learn from,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said, lamenting a 9-0 Minnesota run that swung the momentum Sunday. “I have to find a unit that will actually do it, compete at a higher level. Because to me, that was the game. Then I had to extend minutes, and I’m playing guys into the ground. I can’t do that. Especially with the way the schedule has been very dense.”

A frustrated Adelman hinted at changes to his primary non-Jokic lineup after Denver’s 117-108 loss to the Timberwolves. Its most recent iteration has consisted of Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr., Cam Johnson, Spencer Jones and Jonas Valanciunas, with Johnson staggering as the lone starter. (Jones was replaced by Zeke Nnaji while dealing with a shoulder injury Sunday.)

Jokic typically plays the entire first quarter and the entire third, with his breaks at the start of the second and fourth. The barometer for Adelman’s confidence in the second unit is all about whether Jamal Murray occupies those rest minutes or whether Denver is playing well enough to kill time without both star players.

“I will say this: Throughout the season, we’ve been really good doing that,” Adelman said. Obviously, Cam’s ankle was really hurting him tonight. And throughout the early part of the season, we ran our offense through Cam and Tim. It was really successful. Right now, there’s not a lot of flow to it.”

Anchored by a veteran duo

Hardaway and Brown have been the glue of that unit — a backcourt duo that Adelman has intentionally kept out of the starting lineup, preferring to pair them off the bench even when injuries created openings. Julian Strawther and Jalen Pickett have started over them in several games, not because they’re higher in Denver’s pecking order but because Hardaway and Brown are. “Tim and Bruce, I wanted them to play together as much as possible,” Adelman explained in Oklahoma City. “Don’t break them up. Keep a rhythm. … Two vets who understood what I was trying to do when we had that conversation early on.”

In more than 1,000 minutes together this season, Hardaway and Brown have a minus-1.4 net rating. Below zero sounds bad, but it’s not in this context. They’ve mostly prevented the catastrophic runs that have defined the non-Jokic minutes at their worst over the years.

Valanciunas has anchored the second unit as Jokic’s backup center, but Adelman insinuated before the game Sunday that when Denver is fully healthy, he might prefer to use starting power forward Aaron Gordon at the five for certain matchups. Valanciunas, who isn’t fleet of foot, struggled when Oklahoma City went small on Friday.

“It’s a good learning lesson. Against that team, we may have to change up who plays when,” Adelman said. “The way I’d like to play if we’re going to change our rotation isn’t available to us right now, to play (OKC) in that style of basketball, unless you go dramatically small. So it was trying to stick with what we’ve been doing (in Friday’s game). Obviously, it didn’t go well.”

What happens when Watson returns?

When asked to elaborate on the way he’d like to play, Adelman confirmed that it involves both Gordon and Peyton Watson, who are ramping up to return from injuries. The last time Gordon came back from a hamstring strain in January, Adelman wanted to avoid immediately using him at the five due to the more physically taxing responsibilities of that position. The dynamic could be similar when he returns to the court this time, especially because the Nuggets are wary of Gordon’s overall durability going into what they hope will be a deep playoff run. Still, their tendency over the years has been to lean on him as a backup center when the stakes are highest.

Once upon a time this season, before Watson was forced to become the Nuggets’ second scoring option, he was also an everyday cog in the bench lineup. The four-man combination of him, Brown, Hardaway and Valanciunas has posted an immaculate net rating of 10.4 in a relatively small sample size of 124 minutes. Once Watson and Gordon are both back, Watson will probably be coming off the bench for the first time since mid-November, unless Adelman wants to make a more dramatic change by demoting someone from his starting lineup.

More likely is that Watson returns to his bench role but becomes more of a centerpiece in the second unit’s offense. After all, the more he plays with Jokic and Murray, the less he and the Nuggets will be able to build on his emergence as an efficient ball-in-hand player. In the non-Jokic minutes, Denver can assume a different play style. Watson can seize more opportunities to create his own shot in isolation.

If Brown, Hardaway, Watson and a center are all part of the unit, then who’s the fifth player? This is perhaps the most important variable for Adelman to figure out before the regular season ends. All-bench lineups are rare in the NBA, especially in the playoffs. The Nuggets are like most teams in that they want to stagger at least one other starter during the minutes when their best player is out.

Former coach Michael Malone’s mindset was that he needed one of Jokic or Murray on the court at all times to engineer a functional offense. Adelman’s philosophy differs. He prefers to maximize their minutes together, enabling them to play off each other as much as possible. The domino effect is that Denver has to survive nightly for a few minutes without both.

Adelman felt that his hand was forced this weekend, he said, after the loss to Minnesota. He called a timeout during a Thunder run on Friday to get Murray on the floor for the remainder of Jokic’s breather, alongside Johnson. Then after another terrible stint to start the second quarter Sunday, Adelman switched around his rotation in the fourth, playing Murray instead of Johnson.

“I’m gonna have to force-feed (Jokic and Murray) minutes until we get full again, (when) there’s more options to bring guys off the bench,” the first-year head coach said. “It’s not what I want to do. I like them to play together. I don’t like when I’m taking minutes away from them (as a duo), not being on the court together. But if we have to do it, then we’ll do it. Because this can’t happen.”

Adelman first went to the Johnson stagger early in the season, intending to manufacture more touches for Johnson. The idea was that it would help him gain confidence after a slow start with a new team. It worked. The unit played well together. Johnson shot himself out of a slump. Then he got hurt in late December. After a month on the shelf, Adelman wanted to work Johnson back in by returning to that stagger.

Johnson’s first five games resembled the month of solid overall play after his knee injury. He shot efficiently, defended steadily. Then came two matchups against division rivals that Denver might see in the playoffs. Physical teams that have bothered the Nuggets in past series. Johnson wasn’t part of those seven-game showdowns. He’s four years removed from his last playoff experience. It showed in a pair of playoff-caliber games.

Which leads to Sunday, when the non-Jokic minutes haunted Ball Arena anew and left Adelman vowing to search for answers. A configuration that had worked months earlier had suddenly imploded in one weekend. The Nuggets were climbing out of the wreckage in fifth place in the West.

“It’s happened two games in a row, and it’s cost us big time,” Adelman said. “Quick 12-0, 12-2, 11-2, 11-0, whatever it is. It can’t happen in this high-level of a game. So we’ll have to talk about it. And I will explore. … We’ll try to find a group that will compete and play at a higher level.”

“Obviously, we’ve got Jamal (Murray), Jok (Nikola Jokic), we’ve got guys across the roster that are pretty capable,” Johnson said Sunday after a painful, scoreless afternoon in a galling, 117-108 home loss to Minnesota. “So you’ve got to be able to do your own job. And my lack thereof really cost us (Sunday).”

Johnson sat crestfallen at his locker stall at Ball Arena an hour after arguably his worst game as a Nugget. One minute, his fingers danced on his smart phone. The next, they rested on his forehead.

He stared at his right ankle. He stared at his screen. He stared at the floor.

“I mean, it’s part of life, part of the game. Things happen,”  Johnson, who was 0 for 6 from the floor and 0 for 4 on treys against the Timberwolves, said later. “Good and bad, whether you like it or not. And you’ve just got to … kind of learn to move past it and move forward and figure the rest out.”

Johnson is one of several roster knots coach David Adelman has about six weeks to try and straighten out. The veteran sharpshooter is battling a bad ankle, which is affecting both his movement and his lift.

And yet the bigger battle might be going on between Johnson’s ears right now. Playing on that wonky ankle this past Friday, Cam missed a wide-open three that would’ve buried the Thunder in OKC. At times Sunday, it looked as if he was still carrying the scars from that miss onto the floor with him at Ball. Other times, he looked scared.

A shooter who’s afraid to shoot is a tailback whose first thought is not fumbling. If that’s your mindset, the worst is inevitable.

Aaron Gordon should be coming back later this week, and Peyton Watson allegedly isn’t far behind. Bench your weakest link, right?

Johnson has whiffed on seven of his last eight treys. His ankle’s not in a great place. His confidence isn’t, either, now that you mention it. If you bench him, and everybody knows why, does he ever get that confidence back?

“(Johnson) did not move well (Sunday),” Adelman said. “Obviously, Cam knows we’re out a lot of people at the wing position, so he fought through it. And I think it obviously affected his game. He had a hard time moving side to side. He’ll get checked on now, before we head to Utah. I’m hoping for better news, but obviously it was hurting him (Sunday) throughout the OKC game. But he was moving better in OKC than he was (Sunday).”

Adelman’s got to get Johnson right if he’s to salvage anything from this season. He’s got to get center Jonas Valanciunas right, somehow.

A four-game run of Golden State, Boston, Oklahoma City and Minnesota told us a lot about the Nuggets. Some of it wasn’t exactly pleasant. It’s crystal clear not everybody on Denver’s roster is ready for playoff mode. Or for playoff teams.

Adelman’s second-quarter rotations remain, to put it kindly, puzzling. The stagger still doesn’t quite work against rosters with a pulse.

The second unit is giving off 2025 vibes, despite the new faces. Elite guards can’t guard Murray, but when it comes to blow-bys, he can’t guard them, either. Jokic’s shooting legs still seem to wobble late. Johnson’s been whiffing on the open stuff in a make-or-miss league.

Pick your poison. They’ll all kill you come May.

“But, you know, Cam’s our starting small forward. I trust him,” the Nuggets coach continued. “(Sunday), his body just wasn’t there. So, again, like I said …  if Cam’s out, somebody else has to step up.”

Tim Hardaway Jr. (17 points, three 3-pointers) did. Jalen Pickett (four points, two assists in six minutes) did, too. Yet a good chunk of the roster Sunday were just passengers on the struggle bus — one that dropped the Nuggets off Sunday night as the 5 seed in the Western Conference.

“It’s just a lot of effort, a lot of attention to detail,” Johnson continued. “That’s what it comes down to.”

That and shooting. The Wolves made just nine shots on 20 attempts (45%) in the first quarter as the Nuggets cranked up the temperature defensively. Minnesota made nine of its first 15 to open the second stanza (60%) and 14 of 24 for the period (58.3%). Same as it ever was.

The Nuggets are now 1-9 over their last 10 games against teams with winning records. Denver’s been bum-slaying for more than a month now. And Cam, for one, is tired of being talked about as a bum.

“It’s on me,” Johnson said. “I’m the only one that got myself in it, so I’ve got to be the one to get myself out of it. It happens in life, happens in this league. It wouldn’t be the first time I’m dealing with something like this. (I’ve) got to keep working.”

Shooters gotta shoot. But when shooters miss open threes on national TV, it leaves a mark.

“What’s the most frustrating part for you after a game like this?” Johnson was asked.

“Where do I begin? You mean personally or team-wise?” Johnson said. “Knowing that it’s such a severe lack of contribution. (That) really shows up in the end.”

It’s looking as if the cavalry ain’t coming via a veteran buyout, either. . Kyle Anderson That thins out the herd a bit when it comes to tides that can lift all boats — including postseason ones.

That Johnson guy? The one who drives you nuts?

He’s all they got.

“You sure you feel OK?” I asked Johnson as the media scrum broke up.

“Yeah,” Cam replied.

“The ankle?”

“It’ll be all right,” the Nuggets forward countered.

So will they. But Adelman’s got to get 23 figured out first. And fast.

The Nuggets are planning to sign former CU Buffs star KJ Simpson to a two-way contract, filling the spot they opened up by converting Spencer Jones to a standard NBA deal on Wednesday, league sources told The Denver Post.

Simpson, 23, was waived by Charlotte after the trade deadline this month. Drafted 42nd overall by the Hornets in 2024, he played in 50 games over the last two seasons and started 17 of them, averaging 7.3 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.9 assists.

The 6-foot-2 guard represents additional ball-handling depth for the Nuggets as they prepare for the last third of the regular season. They returned from the All-Star break sitting in third place in the Western Conference, but their cushion on seventh was only three games as they resumed play Thursday at the Clippers. Simpson won’t be eligible to appear in NBA playoff games while he’s on a two-way contract.

Denver now has three guards occupying its two-way spots, with Simpson joining rookies Curtis Jones and Tamar Bates.

Simpson played 98 games during a three-year college career at Colorado. He earned First Team All-Pac-12 honors as a junior and stamped his place in program history during the 2024 NCAA Tournament, when he buried a game-winning shot against Florida to send CU to the second round. That Colorado team broke a program record with 26 wins. Simpson, Tristan da Silva and Cody Williams were each drafted in 2024.

Players on two-way contracts split their time between the NBA and G League, depending on where they’re needed. Denver’s G League affiliate, the Grand Rapids Gold, has been without key players such as Jones, Bates and big man DaRon Holmes II for most of the last two months, with Jones and Holmes assigned to Denver and Bates injured.

The Nuggets have used Jalen Pickett and Julian Strawther as complementary guards in the starting lineup recently while navigating injuries. They prefer to use Tim Hardaway Jr. off the bench to generate an extra scoring jolt when they go to their substitutions, though Hardaway has also closed several games this season.

Spencer Jones free agency detail

When Jones goes to restricted free agency this summer, his price tag might be more expensive than the Nuggets can afford while also absorbing other pay increases.

Jones started 34 games for Denver before the All-Star break. If he starts seven more and gets to 41, he’ll become the first player to qualify for a CBA provision called the “starter criteria,” sources told The Post. Basically, it would increase his qualifying offer to more than $5 million.

For the Nuggets to retain their matching rights as the incumbent team in restricted free agency, they’re required to first extend a one-year guaranteed qualifying offer to the player between the last game of the NBA Finals and June 29. Peyton Watson is also set to be a restricted free agent.

Between Watson’s contract situation and the raises owed to Christian Braun and Aaron Gordon on their respective extensions, the Nuggets’ payroll is currently projected to skyrocket back into the luxury tax in July.

Whether they choose the tax, the first apron or the second apron as the threshold they want to stay under, they’ll likely end up in a pinch. And that means they’ll have very little room for salaries above the minimum on the bottom half of their roster. Jones could feasibly become another casualty of Denver’s depth if he starts enough games before the end of the season.

The Nuggets somehow, someway, boast a 35-20 record at the All-Star break. Despite a training room that triggers claustrophobia. Despite missing three-time MVP Nikola Jokic for four weeks. Despite Aaron Gordon playing in 23 games. Despite Christian Braun and Cam Johnson being sidelined for half the season.

What a ride.

What a waste.

The time away offers the Nuggets a chance to exhale. But when they return, their season will be summed up with a sigh without significant improvement.

Hate to break it to you, but the Nuggets are once again bad on defense.

With first-year coach David Adelman pulling the right levers, the Nuggets went 10-6 without Jokic. They sit third in the Western Conference.

They delivered inspiring wins at Boston and Philadelphia.

But it will not work in the playoffs.

They have 20 road wins, tied for the most in the NBA.

But they can’t beat the Cavaliers and Lakers at home?

Through 55 games, the Nuggets have raised the floor, but the ceiling threatens to remain the same.

What gives? Why the pessimism?

The Nuggets rank 24th in overall defensive rating, 29th in the clutch and they don’t force turnovers.

And you thought the Broncos were the only team that struggled to get takeaways? The Thunder have already lost as many games this season (14) as they did a year ago. Nobody in the East creates fear.

What an opportunity. What a miss.

For everything that has gone right — Jamal Murray turning into Jamall-star, the blossoming of Peyton Watson, the improvement of Jalen Pickett and Julian Strawther — there is a reason to wince.

The Nuggets have the best offense, and struggle to get stops. The NBA marveled as Denver held it together with chicken wire and duct tape without as many as four starters.

Meanwhile, those of us who predicted them to win the NBA championship — my hand is raised — wonder if another Jokic-in-his-prime season will end in disappointment.

Even the recently out-of-sync Jokic — he is averaging 4.4 turnovers per game since he returned, and has 19 over this past three games — remains inevitable offensively. And Murray has found consistency from the first bell.

But for the Nuggets to contend for another title, they must lock up opponents.

Where’s Pat Surtain II when you need him?

For all the hand-wringing over the urgency to win with the best player in the world, the Nuggets’ fate will be determined by Gordon, Watson, Braun, Bruce Brown and Spencer Jones.

Gordon is the piece that makes the puzzle fit. He can guard forwards and centers, versatility that becomes critical as half-court possessions become more central to playoff outcomes. Whether he can remain in the lineup for 16 postseason wins is a concern given his litany of calf and hamstring issues. His resume is so thick, however, that he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Watson is young. His hamstring will be fine. The Nuggets need his length on the perimeter. It does not require squinting to see Denver falling in seven games in the second round again if they don’t defend 3-pointers better. Watson is part of that solution.

Braun is critical. When the Nuggets won it all in 2023, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was a menace capable of clinging to a top shooting guard like lint. Braun has shown the ability to be a strong on-ball defender, but can he trust his ankle this spring?

Early returns screamed no. The last three games suggest the arrow is pointing up.

Brown and Jones are reliable. Brown will dig in against the best and let the world know about it. Jones provides energy and effort that jump off the screen. The Nuggets are slow-playing converting Jones from a two-way to a standard contract because of the All-Star break and the player working his way through a concussion.

The idea that the Nuggets’ title bid hinges on Jones sounds absurd. It is not. He does not have to be a factor every night. But he will likely have to steal a game with a steal or two.

If the Nuggets don’t at least reach the NBA Finals, it would represent a bigger missed opportunity than the Broncos falling to the Patriots in the AFC Championship. At least the Broncos had an excuse. No Bo Nix and a coach who forgot to kick.

The Nuggets have leaned on injuries to provide cover for all flaws and mistakes. Just wait until everyone returns. But that misses the point.

It is not about getting the band back together. It is about playing with purpose on both ends of the floor. The Nuggets were a mess defensively last season, leaving former coach Michael Malone to rip them so viciously after a loss at Portland that I figured the coach knew he was going to be fired or wanted to be.

Compromised rotations or not, the Nuggets are not any better this season.

We can all come up with reasons why the Nuggets have not returned to their 2023 heights — too tired, too much drama, too few bench players.

The mitigation needs to stop. This team was built to win big.

Adelman, an offensive genius, needs his team to play defense like it means it. Like it matters.

You see where this is going, right? With Jokic back, the other guys have to have his back. They need to play like they did without him, by getting in front of guys, switching and producing turnovers.

Because one thing is becoming clear. If the Nuggets don’t reach their goals, there will be no defending them.