Nuggets center Nikola Jokic finished in second place in the 2025-26 MVP vote, the league announced Sunday night. In what was widely regarded as a three-horse race, Jokic was a distant runner-up but extended his streak of top-two finishes to six consecutive years, joining Bill Russell and Larry Bird as the only players to do so.

Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was crowned MVP for the second straight season. San Antonio Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama, just 22 years old, placed third. He was also named Defensive Player of the Year last month. The Spurs and Thunder are set to compete in the Western Conference Finals starting Monday night.

The award is decided by a panel of 100 voters who cover the NBA and its teams for various local, national and international media outlets. Jokic appeared on all 100 ballots, earning 10 first-place votes and 48 second-place nods. He was third on 37 ballots, fourth on four, fifth on one.

Gilgeous-Alexander received the lion’s share of the first-place votes with 83. Wembanyama got five votes for first. Ballots are submitted before the playoffs begin, ensuring that only the regular season is taken into account — meaning that Denver’s first-round exit had no bearing on the tally this year.

Jokic averaged 27.7 points, 12.9 rebounds and 10.7 assists per game, marking the seventh time in NBA history that a player has averaged a triple-double. Jokic, Russell Westbrook and Oscar Robertson are the only players to accomplish the feat. Jokic has done it two seasons in a row.

He shot 56.9% from the field, 38% from 3-point range and 83.1% from the foul line, good for a 67% true shooting clip that ranked fifth in the league. At 66.5%, Gilgeous-Alexander was the only non-center to rank in the top eight. He averaged 31.1 points, 4.3 rebounds and 6.6 assists for the defending champion and first-place Thunder.

Jokic’s season was split in two parts by a knee injury he suffered on Dec. 29, 2025, in Miami. Before he limped off the court with a bone bruise, he was averaging 29.6 points on 67% shooting inside the arc and 43.5% shooting outside it. After he returned a month later, his scoring dropped to 25.8 points per game at a 60.3% clip from 2-point range and an inefficient 31.9% mark from deep.

His shooting splits were even worse in the playoffs — 55.3% from two, 19.4% from three as the Timberwolves eliminated Denver in six games. The Serbian big man struggled to contend with four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert for most of the series. The Nuggets failed to advance to the second round for the first time since 2022.

Jokic has won three regular-season MVPs in his career, in addition to NBA Finals MVP in 2023 when he led Denver to its first championship. He’s eligible to sign a contract extension this summer.

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 take on $2 million in dead cap. But that would probably cost them 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.

Is Adelman the right guy for the job? And the team? I don’t think so.

— Sam C, via email

The team seems to be a collection of disparate personalities. … Was Michael Malone the secret to the team’s success? He seemed uniquely tuned in to how to handle these very different players’ needs for guidance (until the conflict with Calvin Booth eclipsed that). Adelman seems more like a passionless technician who can’t or won’t work on meshing the team’s personalities. The team’s lack of in-game fire compared to peak Malone has me wondering.

— Casey, Denver

I’ve heard this sentiment a lot recently, and I find it a little misguided. Last week, I came across the video of Jamal Murray’s 2024 playoff buzzer-beaters to beat the Lakers. It’s one of the most memorable games I’ve covered on the Nuggets beat (top three at minimum?), so of course I was instantly reeled in by the highlight. My eyes wandered to Denver’s bench, studying the reactions as Murray released the shot and fell into his teammates. Perhaps the most animated of all is the bald guy with the clipboard who jumps for joy and punches the air.

Evidence of Adelman’s emotion is pretty easy to find unless you willfully ignore it. Players have said on the record that he can be startlingly direct with them, that he wields an intensity but reserves it for behind the scenes. “I probably seem pretty calm, but I am kind of psychotic sometimes,” he said himself in March, before the calmness became a popular criticism.

From my point of view as The Media, accusing Adelman of being passionless or unable to motivate his players just because he’s usually a more stoic sideline presence and a less fiery postgame quote than his predecessor is unfair to the position he’s in.

Michael Malone lost the locker room largely because his fire-and-brimstone approach to the job grated on players. That’s not to discount his coaching chops or his accomplishments in Denver — his name will be in the rafters someday, and rightfully so — but it’s just the reality of how his tenure ended. When he blasted his team’s effort at press conferences, it might’ve felt satisfying to fans watching on TV who felt the same way. But to many players, it sparked frustration, not inspiration. Adelman took over the job with that needle to thread. By nature, he’s certainly a cooler head than Malone to begin with, but he also had to be a little reticent about calling players out publicly.

He did criticize the Nuggets for their effort two or three times this season — he wasn’t completely unwilling to do so — but he was conservative with those bullets. By firing fewer of them, the times he did felt more revealing, from my perspective as the person who was often eliciting postgame comments from him.

For the most part, he prioritized substance over style in his messaging. He didn’t shy away from the obvious when someone played poorly. He didn’t pretend Jamal Murray shot 80% from the field in a game if he shot 20%. He just didn’t discuss it with any bluster. He was matter-of-fact without being harsh on his players. His approach to media actually reminded me of Jared Bednar, whom I covered briefly on the Avalanche beat.

By no means am I saying Adelman is above criticism. Part of a head coach’s job is to be accountable for the team’s failures, and this Nuggets season unquestionably ended in failure. He’s earned praise over the years for being one of the masterminds behind a great offense; that means he must also be willing to accept blame when that offense sputters. He understands that. In his end-of-season presser last week, he pointed out that the Nuggets allowed Minnesota to guard their two-man game straight-up too much throughout the series, 2-on-2 with Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels, reducing Denver’s shot quality. Role players didn’t get as many open looks. Nikola Jokic and Murray didn’t sufficiently bring weaker defenders into the action. That’s part execution, part coaching. Jokic, Murray and Adelman needed to be better.

But I think there’s a difference between criticizing him for that and ridiculing him for his measured approach, which was a key reason his employers hired him and a reason his employees advocated for him last summer. Arguably, the most important aspect of being an NBA head coach today is managing personalities in a locker room with a payroll exceeding $200 million. You need your players to think highly of you. As of now, the two most important people in the building do. And that’s more important than the court of public opinion.

Based on last year’s moves during the offseason, what letter grade would you have given our front office at the time? What is our dynamic duo/power of friendship front office’s letter grade potential this offseason?

— Madalynn, Denver

Without literally grading them, I essentially gave Ben Tenzer and Jon Wallace an “A” last summer. They managed to simultaneously improve the depth of the roster and decrease the payroll — a balancing act that satisfied their fans, their star player and their bosses in the owner’s suite.

In hindsight, there are a few decisions that sting. They had to part with an unprotected first-round pick to swap Michael Porter Jr.’s controversial contract for Cam Johnson’s more modest salary. That’s an asset they’d like to have now, even if Johnson ultimately outperformed Porter in recent playoff games.

The Jonas Valanciunas, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Bruce Brown acquisitions were successful in the regular season but disappointing against Minnesota. Valanciunas, in particular, was out of the rotation for most of the series — but it’s not like Tenzer and Wallace were kicking themselves, wishing they had kept Dario Saric as they watched Game 4 fall apart.

The Nuggets also swayed Russell Westbrook into declining his player option by telling him he wasn’t wanted back for a second season. That decision looks bad on paper now, especially when athleticism and ball-handling have been pinpointed as 2026 offseason priorities. But I still feel inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, because efficient ball-handling is what they really need. Westbrook’s recklessness was costly last year. His turnover rate caused a lot of headaches internally.

Choosing to keep Spencer Jones for a second season on a two-way contract ended up being a huge win. The Nuggets should want to make sure they keep him in restricted free agency this summer.

And speaking of restricted free agency, the obvious winner for most regrettable decision one year later was choosing Christian Braun’s extension over Peyton Watson’s. It seemed like a self-explanatory decision at the time. Now Braun is coming off his worst season, and Watson is coming off his best.

It will be much more difficult for Tenzer and Wallace to earn an “A” this year. The payroll restraints are far more inhibitive, and the most likely outcome — as I see it — is that Denver will tip off the 2026-27 season with a noticeably worse roster than the 2025-26 team.

Who can you see leaving the Nuggets roster in the offseason?

— Ed, Auburn, New York

Apologies for the temporary cop-out answer, Ed, but I’m planning to write a more in-depth answer to this exact question soon. (That’s right, it’s a shameless plug for another story that is yet to be written.) Without going into detail on my reasoning, my educated guess is that Denver loses Cam Johnson and one other top-six player.

Which season-ending loss to Minnesota was worse: 2024 Game 7 (blowing a 20-point lead at home) or 2026 Game 6 (no Ant, Donte or Ayo)?

— Lucas, via email

Perfect way to wrap this up: with the most self-loathing question of the day. We appreciate your vulnerability, Lucas. We’ve all been there as sports fans at one time or another.

My take is 2024. After Denver was eliminated a couple of weeks ago, I wrote: “The 2024 loss stung because the Nuggets knew they were good enough to win the championship. The 2026 loss stings because they were jolted awake to the unforeseen reality that they weren’t good enough.”

The former is going to be more painful to reckon with over time, I think. If the Nuggets end up winning only one championship with Jokic, there are two critical moments that Coloradans will look back on as the tragic what-ifs. First will be Murray’s ACL injury, which sidelined him for the 2021 and 2022 playoffs, neither of which ended with a particularly dominant, convincing champion (Milwaukee and Golden State). Second will be that second-round Game 7 in 2024.

Obviously, there’s no telling what would have happened next. But the Nuggets won a franchise-record 57 games that season with the same starting five that won the title. They ranked in the top 10 in defensive rating, which feels impossible to imagine now. They would’ve been clear favorites to beat the fifth-seeded Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals. And in the NBA Finals, they would’ve faced an elite Boston team that had lost to them twice in the regular season. At minimum, I think NBA fans missed out on a potential classic series, regardless of who would’ve won.

This year, the Nuggets dug their grave on the last night of the regular season, whether they care to admit it or not. They weren’t going to knock out Minnesota, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and New York consecutively. Especially after they fell behind 2-1 to the Wolves in a series they needed to end quickly. Losing to such a depleted team might be more embarrassing, but decades from now, it won’t be as haunting.

Their front office is entering the 2026 offseason with many questions and little clarity. The next two months should provide that. In the meantime, one can only read the tea leaves from a 45-minute news conference Friday at Ball Arena.

Team president Josh Kroenke, executive vice president of basketball operations Ben Tenzer, executive vice president of player personnel Jon Wallace and head coach David Adelman spoke to reporters, putting a bow on the 2025-26 campaign and looking ahead. Here were some of the topics they touched on, and the meaning behind their words.

Feeling the pressure

What they said: “We’ve talked about the teams who we’ve lost to (in the playoffs) in the last three years, and I do think that what stood out was ball-handling. Handling pressure. … That really hurt us. And I thought, you know, athleticism is part of the league. The league is younger. The league changes fast. Watching OKC last night, San Antonio, the way they play.

“… We have to rely on more people to bring the ball up the floor. And we have guys on our team that have gotten better at it over the years, but if somebody’s out, other people have to step up. And then on top of that, I have to put them in a situation that’s comfortable for them. … The expectation can’t just be, Aaron’s gonna play 82. It can’t be that Nikola’s gonna play 82, or Jamal. So everybody that’s with our team has to understand that there’s a chance that’s the role I’m gonna step into. … It’s team-reliant. That’s the new NBA. You’re watching all these series. There’s so many people bringing the ball up the floor.” — Adelman

What they mean: This should serve as a decent guide for what the Nuggets hope to add this offseason as they make changes to their roster. When opponents have made a point to pick up full-court against Jamal Murray, Denver has often relied on Aaron Gordon as the release valve to initiate offense. What about when Gordon is unavailable, which happens a lot? The Nuggets tend to find themselves facing a shortage of dependable ball-handlers. They asked Christian Braun to bring it up a bit throughout this season, but he’s made his money as more of an off-ball movement guard. Nikola Jokic can bring it up — after all, he’s a revolutionary point center — but Denver doesn’t necessarily want him to have to use energy doing that consistently, especially if the defense pressures him.

Adelman wants role players like Braun to develop more ball-handling skills in the offseason, but he is also clearly on the lookout for newcomers who can alleviate the ball-in-hand burden on Jokic and Murray. Hence, the March acquisition of point guard Tyus Jones, who suddenly became a key player in Denver’s two elimination games against Minnesota. The Wolves and Thunder are among the top contending teams with ruthless point-of-attack defenders who can wear out a team’s playmakers over the course of a playoff series. Could Jones return next season on a veteran minimum? Might the Nuggets prioritize more backcourt depth with their roster spots? If they trade a starter, could they try to bring back a point guard who can handle and defend? Adelman often likes to start possessions with Murray off the ball, using screens to get him a touch in advantageous spots. Maybe Denver could even rethink the starting lineup and play Murray at the two. Whatever the case, initiation by committee is an area to look for improvement.

Peyton Watson’s free agency market

What they said: “Peyton had a great year. He obviously grew a lot. I said it at the beginning of the season: We hope Peyton is a Nugget for a very long time. He’s been great for us.” — Tenzer

“We tasked Peyton in the preseason with growing. We went to visit him (at home in Los Angeles). We walked him through kind of what the expectations were, without the actual expectation of (him) getting the minutes that he got in that stretch of January. So you have to congratulate him, and kudos to him for staying the course. What he showed us is what we knew he could do. So he did his part. … You’ve gotta continue to hit on these home-grown talents, and he’s been the focal point of that.” — Wallace

What they mean: This was about as direct a statement of intent as the Nuggets could offer publicly. They have the right to match any offer sheet Watson receives as a restricted free agent this summer, so they should be in a position to keep him as long as they’re willing to pay up. After all, when he’s at his best, he represents all of the skillsets Adelman circled. He showed for a small portion of this season that he can handle the ball and create his own shot. He can be impactful at both ends of the floor, not just one. He’s young and athletic — one of the most gifted shot-blocking wings in the league. He’s proven himself to be an effective spot-up shooter when he’s off the ball.

The average annual value will be the intriguing variable with Watson. He’s widely projected to demand at least $20 million per year on his next contract, but what if the number creeps up to the $30 million range? The Lakers, Bulls and Nets should have money to spend.

Who’s in charge of offseason decisions?

What they said: “Those conversations come about organically. Then we start to realize this might be something that we want to do. Let’s meet as a group. Let’s put our heads together from all of our different perspectives. And that’s how we arrive at the best decisions, we feel, for the team. So that’s kind of what we’re going to be doing again this summer. … I’m the president of the team. I’ve been in the same role since 2010. And whether that was Masai Ujiri, whether that was Tim Connelly, whether that was Calvin Booth, whether that’s these guys, I’m always gonna be there, around, listening and trying to help shape the direction of the franchise. … (Interrupting next question) “I know who voted for me (for NBA Executive of the Year), by the way, and it was a joke. It was an inside joke with a mutual friend. I rolled my eyes and said, ‘You’re gonna create hell for me.’ But he thought it was really funny.” — Kroenke

What they mean: This question came about because Kroenke appeared on two ballots for the NBA Executive of the Year award, to the surprise of many Nuggets fans. It warranted a natural question for the sake of transparency: Is Kroenke the real general manager here? He firmly rejected that notion. Tenzer and Wallace both report to him, but they’re the executives who are actually “in the field,” so to speak, doing the day-to-day work of a general manager. A Nuggets spokesperson later clarified that Kroenke was only on the ballot because teams aren’t allowed to list two executives as candidates for the award. If there was only enough room for one person per team, then Denver didn’t want to choose between Tenzer and Wallace, who are equals. As for the jokester: The Denver Post cannot report this as an absolute fact, but there’s a certain president of basketball operations in Minnesota who might’ve been giggling at that question.

Braun backlash

What they said: “I saw CB’s comments, his frustration with himself and the fact that we lost. I love that. And it’s hard to say in public nowadays because you’re gonna get ripped regardless. CB’s a leader. I believe that. … If you really want to look at it, you could say, ‘Well, their leadership didn’t show up in the playoffs’ — then tell me how we got through this season. How did that group stay together? How many different lineups (and) guys had to step up, use their voice? So collectively, I thought the guys were great this year. But throughout the summer, you’re gonna have conversations with guys and try to instill more confidence in them. Feel the need to speak. … I just wanted to make sure I brought that up. I love what CB said. That’s what a human being should say: ‘I’m frustrated. I want to be better. I want the team to be better. And I want to win.’ That’s what I want to hear.” –– Adelman

What they mean: There’s no guarantee that Braun will be on Denver’s roster when the 2026-27 season tips off, but consider this unprompted tangent by Adelman a vote of confidence in what Braun brings to the locker room. The young guard has been roundly scrutinized this week for his assertion to The Denver Post that he’s “the vocal leader of this team,” but he can often be seen breaking the huddle and communicating with his teammates. Adelman saw Braun’s comments for what they were: not a delusional act of self-aggrandizement, but a gesture of accountability after a disappointing performance. Braun often volunteers to take the blame when the Nuggets play poorly; it has become part of his role as their lead defensive guard over the last two years. It is revealing that Adelman recognized there’s room for team-wide improvement in the leadership department — perhaps Braun shouldn’t have to assume that much responsibility at this point in his career.

“Why did the Cubbies lose the 2003 NLCS?” he would ask.

If they answered “Bartman,” or “Steve Bartman,” or anything that sounded remotely like “Bartman,” my pal would wish ’em well, shake his head, and move on. (The correct answer, then and now, is )

We decided the other day that the same test could be applied to Michael Porter Jr. and the Nuggets.

“Would Denver have beaten the Timberwolves in 2026 if they still had MPJ?”

If somebody answers yes, they’re saying something. They’re telling you they’ve never really watched the Nuggets without telling you that they’ve never really watched the Nuggets.

They’re telling you they follow this team via TikTok. Or Xwitter highlights. Or only when the Nuggets happened to be playing the Lakers in the postseason.

“I guess they might miss me,” Porter, now of the Brooklyn Nets, cracked this past week when asked about his former team’s epic choke job “I don’t know. Probably not.”

Yeah, probably not.

MPJ was a good soul, tougher than old leather, He was also a notoriously here.

The brighter the lights, the tighter Porter got. The closer MPJ flew to the sun, the more his wings melted.

When last Denver fans saw Porter in the NBA Playoffs, the pride of Mizzou averaged 7.4 points, 5.3 boards and 0.6 dimes per game in the 2025 Western semis against Oklahoma City. Porter shot at a 25% clip from beyond the arc (9-36).

Yes, MPJ put up those numbers with just one working shoulder. Yes, he played hurt, played through all kinds of pain. Again — tough, tough, tough dude. The spirit was willing, even as the body failed him.

“If I would have been on the Nuggets,” , “we wouldn’t have lost to the Wolves.”

Cherish your history. Just don’t revise it. Remember the last time the Nuggets were eliminated from the postseason by Minnesota? No? Quick refresher: MPJ was Deadpool in Los Angeles and Nicepool in Minneapolis.

With two functional shoulders, Porter averaged 10.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and an assist against the Timberwolves in the 2024 Western Conference semis. He made 32.5% of his looks beyond the arc (13-40).

MPJ dropped 20 on Minny in Game 1. He would go on to score nine or fewer in five of the next six contests. With the Nuggets leading 3-2 in the series, he’d average just 7.5 points in Games 6 and 7, two setbacks that loom even larger in hindsight, and was 2 for 12 on treys.

“I’m a better player than I played in this series,” Porter said after the Nuggets blew Game 7 to Minnesota and Anthony Edwards at home. “I’m a better shooter than I shot in this series. In the NBA, you’ve got to be able to separate off-the-court matters with your on-the-court play. So I don’t have any excuses. … I told my teammates, ‘Sorry.’ I feel like this is on me.”

It wasn’t all on MPJ, to be fair. But when the Nuggets needed a hero,

Cam Johnson, the man who came over in the trade that sent Porter to the Nets last summer, averaged 14 points, 3.2 boards, 2.3 assists against Minnesota in the first round this season. Faced with elimination in Game 6, Johnson dropped 27 points, eight boards and five treys on the Wolves.

The memory. Oh, how it cheats.

It’s not the guy. It was never the guy. It was the contract. Porter came with a $38.3-million cap hit in ’25-26 and a $40.8-million cap hit next season.

The Nuggets don’t land Tim Hardaway Jr., Bruce Brown, Jonas Valanciunas and Johnson if they keep MPJ.

The Nuggets don’t win 54 games in the regular season if they keep MPJ.

The Nuggets don’t go 11-6 while Nikola Jokic is hurt if they keep MPJ.

The Nuggets probably don’t see peak Peyton Watson if they keep MPJ.

And the Nuggets probably don’t get past Minnesota in ’26 if they keep MPJ. No matter what your favorite fantasy basketball expert says while he’s thinking with his thumbs.

“I didn’t like that (Aaron Gordon) was hurt, I didn’t like that (Watson) couldn’t do his thing,” Porter told the ‘Road Trippin’ Show.’ “I was talking to Christian Braun during the series. He hurt his ankle the first game, and he played through it same way I played through a shoulder injury last year. Now, he’s getting killed on social media, especially since the comments he made. Those are my guys. I wanted them to do well.”

Meanwhile, the four guys who replaced him averaged 33.2 points per game in the Wolves series. Let him go. As the Nuggets just proved,

Kroenke, the son of team owner Stan Kroenke, didn’t rule out �貹�⾱�Բ���the costly “repeater tax” when asked directly whether that would drive their decision-making this offseason. But in general, during a 45-minute news conference at Ball Arena, the KSE vice chairman was non-committal about exactly how much money his family is prepared to commit to the 2026-27 team after it underachieved in the 2026 NBA Playoffs.

“I don’t want to be masked in my frustration for how the season ended,” Kroenke said. “I think that anybody that was a fan of the Denver Nuggets should be frustrated. And anything that a fan feels, I probably feel a thousand X. So I think everything is gonna be on the table, outside of trading Nikola.”

The luxury tax is a threshold that requires teams with higher roster payrolls at the end of each season to pay a tax, which is dispersed between the league and teams below the threshold. Essentially, it’s a mechanism designed to punish high-spending owners and reward low spenders.

The Nuggets were a luxury-tax team for three consecutive seasons, from 2022-23 to 2024-25, including the year they won their first NBA championship in franchise history. But what makes this offseason a pivotal moment for them is the additional tax rate known as the repeater tax — a more severe financial penalty 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 done so in three of the previous four seasons as well.

That means for the Nuggets to dodge it, they have to finish 2025-26 and 2026-27 out of the tax.

They’re halfway there, after salary-dumping Hunter Tyson to the Brooklyn Nets before the trade deadline in February — a move that ensured their payroll was under this season’s luxury tax line.

“I don’t think we made ourselves any worse, what we did at the deadline,” Kroenke said.

He chalked it up to “preserving flexibility.” Now, the Nuggets have the option to spend luxuriously next season — a choice that would’ve been available to them regardless — or avoid the luxury tax again and . Two consecutive years out of the tax would reset Kroenkes’ repeater clock, allowing them to spend into the luxury tax for another three consecutive years from 2027-28 through 2029-30 without paying the additional penalties.

“I think that the responsible thing to do at that moment in time, if there wasn’t a huge move we saw that could strengthen the roster, was to put ourselves in position to (avoid the tax),” Kroenke said.

It’s a sentiment that was echoed by KSE president of team and media operations Kevin Demoff in a February interview with the KSE-owned radio station Altitude Sports. “Who knows what will happen next year,” Demoff said at the time, “but what’s really penalizing right now in the NBA is if you’re in the repeater tax.”

So what’s the decision three months later regarding that repeater tax, now that flexibility has been achieved?

“If we deem running it back the most competitive thing we can do for the roster, that’s probably what we’re going to be doing,” Kroenke said Friday. “So I don’t want to put words in my dad’s mouth by any means, but he has owned the team for a very long time. We’ve run it aggressively as we can at different points in time. I think that the joke is always, we love to pay for talent on the floor. So leaning into that assessment that people have put on us at different points in time, if we deem that’s the most competitive thing for us, then that’s what we’re gonna be doing.”

Nuggets’ payroll set to spike

The problem for Nuggets ownership is that simply “running it back” with every important player from a wasted 2025-26 season is expensive. There’s the repeater tax, and then there’s the second apron, another payroll threshold introduced in the 2023 NBA collective bargaining agreement that involves increased tax rates and punitive roster-building restrictions. With new contract extensions going into effect for Aaron Gordon, Christian Braun and possibly Peyton Watson this summer, the Nuggets’ payroll is about to spike. They’re projected to be a second-apron team unless they make cost-cutting trades.

And if precedent is any indicator, the Kroenkes have not entered the second apron at any point in its existence so far. They avoided it in 2024 by letting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk in free agency. Cleveland is the only team set to finish this season in the second apron.

That’s why several league sources have told The Denver Post they anticipate the Nuggets trading at least one starter this offseason, especially if they retain Watson in free agency.

So when Kroenke uses the term “running it back,” he doesn’t mean running it back completely. That would require signing up for second apron and repeater tax payments.

A more accurate term than “running it back” is “not completely reconfiguring the roster.”

“When I say running it back, you’re talking about a lot of different variations of what ‘running it back’ could look like,” he clarified. “Is it gonna be the exact same team? I don’t think there’s ever the exact same team of the 13 to 16 guys in there. But are you talking about the same core group of players? Potentially. And that could mean re-signing and bringing back certain guys as well.”

The core he’s referring to consists of Jokic, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon. Before this season, Kroenke — like most fans and people around the league — viewed those three and Michael Porter Jr. as Denver’s core. Porter was traded for Cam Johnson last summer, a move that enabled the Nuggets to both shed salary and deepen their bench in subsequent trades.

“We had to take a hard look at where we had committed ourselves from a salary standpoint, and understanding that having three max players was probably not something that was gonna be continuous for us going forward,” Kroenke said. “Love Michael as a person. Love Michael as a player. But that was something we felt the organization needed to do to maintain a roster going forward, to establish more depth.”

The question that will loom over the next two months is whether Gordon or Murray might join Porter as salary cap sacrifices.

As Kroenke indicated, it’s on the table.

But trading either of them would double as an acknowledgment that Denver’s current template has gone stale. Kroenke is not entirely sure that’s true.

“I think we need to have running it back as a possibility. I think this season was, in a lot of ways, the season that never was, because this group never fully got a chance to show any kind of rhythm,” he said. “… I think that a microcosm of our season is Nikola before and after the (knee) injury. He was one player before, and when he came back, he was still incredible in so many facets, but for some reason, his 3-point shot left him. Whether or not you believe me, I do believe that basketball is a rhythm game, and the team as a whole never had a chance to fully establish a rhythm. And that truly showed up when the games mattered in April.”

If it’s not Murray or Gordon, then at least one of Braun, Johnson or Watson will likely end up on a new team for money-saving purposes.

Meanwhile, the rest of the NBA is widely expected to be more competitive next season — from the bottom tier, where anti-tanking regulations and a weaker draft class should curb teams’ intentional losing, to the upper echelons, where Oklahoma City and San Antonio stand tall.

If the Nuggets do risk weakening their roster for payroll reasons this summer, can they consider themselves championship contenders anymore?

“It depends,” Kroenke said. “I think the smartest teams can figure out how to stay competitive while having to make some of those cutthroat moves at different points in time. But we’ve developed a lot of things around here organically, and we want to try to hang onto those pieces for sure.”

“I have full faith in Coach Adelman,” team president and KSE vice chairman Josh Kroenke said Friday at Ball Arena. “I think he coached a hell of a season, all things considered.”

Kroenke defended Adelman when pressed during a news conference about Denver’s decision to retain him for a second season. The Nuggets were eliminated by Minnesota in the first round of the NBA playoffs, marking the first time since 2022 that they haven’t advanced to a second-round series and bringing a sour end to Adelman’s first season as an NBA head coach.

“This isn’t an organization that makes changes like we made last year lightly,” Kroenke said, referring to the 2025 firing of Michael Malone. “We don’t take those decisions lightly. So I think the quote from myself last year was that we needed to reinvent ourselves, but not reinvent the wheel. And I think we did that in a lot of ways. I want to give credit to, one, DA, and then (the front office) for pressing a lot of the right buttons last summer to put ourselves in a new kind of (situation to) turn the page without fully breaking apart a true championship team.”

Adelman, who turns 45 next week, was a Nuggets assistant under Malone from 2017-25. He took over as interim head coach last April, with three games left in the regular season, and led the Nuggets to the second round of the NBA Playoffs, where they came within one win of upsetting the eventual champion Oklahoma City Thunder. With the locker room’s endorsement, Adelman was able to shed the “interim” tag.

His first full year at the helm was defined by injury instability. He used 28 different starting lineups in the regular season. He navigated a month without three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, the longest absence of his 11-year career, going 10-6 without the superstar center. And he shepherded the team into the playoffs on a 12-game win streak. The Nuggets finished with a 54-28 record, good enough for the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference.

But they crashed and burned in the first round, losing in six games to their archrivals. By the end of the series, the Timberwolves were missing star guard Anthony Edwards and starting two-guard Donte DiVincenzo.

Jokic stuck up for Adelman after the season-ending loss, asserting that the outcome wasn’t his fault. Jamal Murray also praised the first-year coach in the aftermath of a disappointing Game 6.

“While we’re very proud that we won 54 games, I’m most proud of that stretch (in January), the way that the coaching staff was without Nikola,” Kroenke said. “I think when Nikola is on your roster, you should be winning 50 games probably. So that’s a great accomplishment in most NBA circles, but for us, I think that’s where we expect to be. And we expect to be even higher. I thought that if this group was healthy, that this could be a 60-, 65-win team.”

Denver capitulated to the Minnesota Timberwolves in six games, a championship bid ending in vacant stares and shaking heads. Braun accepted responsibility. Then he elaborated. 

“I just think I’m the leader of this team,” Braun said. “I’m the vocal leader of this team. And when we don’t play well as a whole, you can blame whatever you want … You can blame anything. But I didn’t play well enough as an individual, and I didn’t have this team ready enough to play in a tough series. So we’ll be better. I’ll be better. I’m looking forward to next year, when we can respond.”

Braun deserves criticism for his awful playoff performance and his lost regular season due to an ankle injury. His quote, on the surface, was absurd. More concerning is that it set off no alarms among his teammates.

How could it? Minutes earlier, Jamal Murray admitted that the Timberwolves wanted it more, and took “it kind of personal.”

Braun meant what he said because he has grown into an outsized role over the past three years in a locker room with a three-time MVP, a player whose number will hang from the rafters and a veteran known affectionately by fans as Mr. Nugget.

This is why the Nuggets are doomed without adding their own version of Gabe Landeskog.

The Avs are 51-7-8 with Landeskog in the lineup this season. But his real value lies in his leadership.

He is the captain, and leads by example, both physical and verbal. Teammates can go to him with concerns, and he is able to communicate points to the coaching staff. Avs players will do what he tells them out of respect, out of love, not fear (that is reserved for Nathan MacKinnon’s glare).

And he takes up for them on the ice.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. You want to mouth off, Landeskog will talk with his fists. You want to take a run at MacKinnon or Cale Makar, a hard check into the boards will be postmarked with vengeance.

Landeskog takes his role seriously.

No doubt Braun does, too. But the loss to the Timberwolves revealed that he is miscast.

Want to be the leader of the team? After Jaden McDaniels called out Nikola Jokic, Murray, Aaron Gordon, Cam Johnson and Tim Hardaway Jr. as “bad defenders,” Braun should have been waiting, mouth frothing.

The first time McDaniels took the ball to the basket in Game 3, Braun should have fouled him in a way that conjured images of  The second time McDaniels exploded to the hoop, Braun should have fouled him in ways that brought back memories of .

Hard. Clean. Enough is enough. Instill toughness.

Braun did none of it.

Yet blaming him is misguided.

The fact that he felt comfortable talking the way he did tells you everything that is wrong with the Nuggets’ current roster and coaching staff.

Why would he not think he is the leader? His play reflected his team. He was timid, passed up open shots, and was not a lock-down defender. Like his teammates, he accepted accountability and, by virtue of his actions on the court, took nothing personally.

As the Nuggets enter an offseason of uncertainty, it is clear the roster no longer works, especially since all indications are that David Adelman is safe. An argument can be made for letting Adelman learn on the job, but he fueled concerns that he is a better offensive coordinator than head coach with the playoff collapse.

This is not second-guessing.  I wrote six weeks ago that the Nuggets needed a player to provide bad cop energy, to give the team an edge and keep everything in line when the defense slipped because they ran off the last coach who urged them to guard people.

Something has to give.

Maybe it starts with trying to move Gordon to the Celtics in exchange for Colorado legend Derrick White. And obviously, trading Johnson must be discussed as a way to bring back Peyton Watson. He must be a top priority.

The Nuggets are over the luxury tax and both aprons. And if history is a guide, it is hard to see ownership absorbing any financial penalties next season.

Compliance starts with moving on from backup center Jonas Valanciunas, spreading $2 million over three seasons rather than paying him a $10 million salary. And it is unlikely Hardaway comes back unless he signs a team-friendly deal, his situation not dissimilar from Bruce Brown’s after the Nuggets won their championship.

The Nuggets must treat failure as a curriculum.

Looking at the Thunder, the Spurs, and the Timberwolves, there is no way to see the Nuggets as a championship contender. They do not match up well against elite teams. Their scoring was a problem against Minnesota, but not as much as the lack of physicality and protection against drives to the rim.

It has shown up on the road where flaws are typically exposed. In their last 10 postseason games away from Ball Arena, the Nuggets are 2-8, including six losses by double digits.

The Nuggets’ front office of Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer received high marks for building a new bench last offseason. That is exactly what was needed on the spreadsheet. It accounted for strategy, not chemistry.

Now, they are faced with solving a problem they inadvertently created with an inexperienced coach and a roster absent a mean streak.

The Nuggets boast too many good vibes guys. They don’t have a Landeskog. Or a MacKinnon.

There are players with these traits, but they are not displayed with the consistency that, in hockey parlance, would demand a C or an A on their chest.

This is how Braun found himself in front of a microphone after Game 6. He is a veteran with a high basketball IQ. A proven winner.

But he cannot be this team’s leader.

Two years from now if he has lived up to his contract extension? Sure.

When he is averaging 18 points per game and stifling top scorers in the fourth quarter? Yep.

But until then, he needs to become a face in the crowd with a louder, more proven player’s voice filling the room. A player like Landeskog.

As he charged up the middle of the floor last Thursday, they could almost start to picture Game 7 back home. The Nuggets were on a 7-0 run in the third quarter of Game 6. They had held Minnesota scoreless for three minutes. They were finally about to reclaim the lead in a game they were supposed to control from the outset.

They had momentum. Braun had momentum. Nikola Jokic fed him the ball in transition, as he’s done hundreds of times. One of the best fast-break scorers in the NBA had only one backpedaling defender between him and the basket. But as he entered the paint with his second dribble, he accidentally left the ball behind — an unforced turnover that summed up Braun’s physically uncomfortable and statistically unproductive series.

The Timberwolves took advantage, collecting the loose ball and scoring a go-ahead layup. It was one of Denver’s last chances to take the lead in an eventual season-ending loss.

Braun’s reluctance around the rim was often a noticeable theme of the first-round playoff series, which the Nuggets lost 4-2, condemning them to a long offseason. Like Jokic and Jamal Murray, the fourth-year guard volunteered to take the blame. Hindered by multiple injuries — one well documented, one kept private — Braun struggled to supply the athleticism Denver desperately needed with Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson both out of the lineup. Defeat left a poor taste in his mouth.

“It’s just unacceptable. Especially with the talent we have on this roster,” Braun said. “I think when we come here every single year, we talk about championships. That’s our mindset and our goal. And obviously, we fell short. A first-round exit’s not acceptable. We’ve gotta bounce back. We’ve gotta get to work. … You can kind of put it on my shoulders. I think this team wasn’t resilient enough in the playoffs.”

When asked to elaborate, he said the lack of resilience was a reflection of him.

“I just think I’m the leader of this team,” Braun said. “I’m the vocal leader of this team. And when we don’t play well as a whole, you can blame whatever you want … You can blame anything. But I didn’t play well enough as an individual, and I didn’t have this team ready enough to play in a tough series. So we’ll be better. I’ll be better. I’m looking forward to next year, when we can respond.”

Injuries limit Braun’s explosiveness

That’s assuming, of course, that he’s still on the roster. Braun knows well that underachieving in the NBA tends to breed scrutiny and speculation. The future of Denver’s core around Jokic has rarely been more in doubt than it is after failing to win a playoff series for the first time in four years.

Braun averaged 8.3 points and 3.5 rebounds in 31 minutes per game in the playoffs. Despite his down year as a 3-point shooter, his 6-for-14 clip against Minnesota (42.9%) was ironically a minor bright spot in a series in which Denver’s perimeter shooting as a whole dried up.

But his volume from deep wasn’t nearly high enough to make a difference, and he struggled inside the arc, missing 13 of his 22 shot attempts from 2-point range. He often pulled the ball out of the paint instead of trying to finish strong at the rim. It was his attack mindset in his third NBA season that helped him earn a five-year, $125 million rookie extension from the Nuggets. He signed it the day before the 2025-26 season. It goes into effect next year. He’s currently under contract longer than anyone else on the roster.

“I was rewarded for my work on my rookie deal, so I understand the expectations are higher, and I need to be better,” Braun said. “That just is what it is. So as an individual, I understand I need to get better. I need to play better. I get to get healthy, first and foremost. But there is no excuse.”

Braun missed 38 games during the regular season after suffering a severe left ankle sprain on Nov. 12. He initially tried to return on Jan. 4, but after struggling for three games, it was clear he wasn’t ready. He was able to run. He wasn’t able to jump. He went back on the shelf for another three weeks, then spent the rest of the season growing accustomed to a routine of postgame treatment on the ankle. He had torn the ligaments on the inside and outside of it. It was the first serious injury of his basketball career. It continued to swell up during the playoffs.

Meanwhile, he also sustained an injury and developed swelling in his left calf in Game 1 against the Timberwolves, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation. It exacerbated Braun’s inability to explode off the ground — his left leg is the one he usually pushes off of when he jumps.

With 20 seconds left in Game 2, he was flat-footed in the dunker spot when Jokic passed up a floater to dump him the ball underneath the basket. The Timberwolves collapsed to Braun before he could jump for a layup attempt. He drew a foul, only to miss a critical free throw that would have tied the game. Jokic admitted afterward that he should’ve taken the shot.

In the last four games of the series, Braun averaged 5.5 points on 6-for-17 shooting. The Nuggets lost his minutes by a combined 37 points in their three road losses at Minnesota.

“Any season for me that doesn’t end with a championship, I think, is a disappointment,” Braun said when asked about his individual season. “… I could sit here and make every excuse. I could blame my ankle. I could blame injuries that people don’t know about. But that doesn’t really matter. If I’m going to be on the court, the expectation is to win. The expectation is to play well.”

Offseason roster questions loom

If the Nuggets were to move on from Braun this offseason, it’s widely believed that they would need to attach other assets in a trade to get another team to take on his contract. They currently have no future first-round draft picks eligible to be traded, after using their 2032 pick to move off Michael Porter Jr.’s hefty salary last summer. They can, however, trade this year’s first-round pick on draft night if they so choose.

More likely, Denver will need Braun to get healthy and prove that his 2024-25 season wasn’t an anomaly. He was a candidate for Most Improved Player that year, leading all NBA guards in true shooting percentage with a 66.5% clip, ranking fourth overall behind three centers. He did that while guarding the opponent’s best perimeter player most nights. He averaged 15.4 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.6 assists, leading the league in fast-break points.

That and a vote of confidence from Jokic guided the Nuggets to prioritize him over Peyton Watson in preseason extension talks, a league source said. Now it’s Watson who’s coming off a breakout year, while Braun faces scrutiny about what he is and can be as an NBA starter. He’s never been a high-volume 3-point shooter, but his percentage dropped from 39.7% to 30.1% this season. His scoring efficiency in transition also declined marginally. His true shooting took a 5.8% hit. At the other end of the floor, he’s been good throughout his career but hasn’t ascended to All-Defensive Team levels.

As the Nuggets assess their roster needs this summer, he expects to be an internal solution by rediscovering the spring in his step.

“We were a historic offense during the regular season. We were so good. Even with guys in and out, we were really good,” he said. “And that just didn’t translate into the playoffs this year. And that goes on every one of us. It goes on the screener who’s getting guys open, whoever’s taking the shot. I need to be more aggressive with the ball and go downhill better. There’s a ton of things you can blame. You can’t point at Jok and all those guys. They’re killers. That’s what they do every night. So we’ve gotta help those guys. I’ve gotta help those guys. Whether it’s screening well, whether it’s bringing the ball up and taking care of it, we’ve just gotta be better. And I know we will moving forward.”

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.