Canada Basketball general manager Rowan Barrett told reporters the program wanted players who were willing to make a three-year commitment, starting this summer with World Cup qualifying.

“Just to be really honest with you, if guys don’t commit this summer, they’re not in (for the World Cup and Olympics),” Barrett said, according to .

Murray, 29, is one of Canada’s biggest stars. Averaging 25.4 points, 4.4 rebounds and 7.1 assists for Denver this season, he was one of two Canadians to make an All-NBA team, along with MVP winner Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

The 23-man pool featured several notable NBA players, including Gilgeous-Alexander (Thunder), Nickeil Alexander-Walker (Hawks), Dillon Brooks (Suns), Lu Dort (Thunder), Andrew Nembhard (Pacers), RJ Barrett (Raptors), Bennedict Mathurin (Clippers) and Kyshawn George (Wizards). Grizzlies center Zach Edey is reportedly committed to playing for the team once he’s healthy, but he wasn’t on the list because he’s missing training camp this summer with an injury.

Heat wing Andrew Wiggins and Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe were among the other notable absences.

“Jamal Murray is not committed to playing in the program going forward,” Rowan Barrett said. “He’s got tremendous desire to play for the country, but sometimes there are things going on with the athletes that prevent them from doing so.”

Murray did play alongside Gilgeous-Alexander and his other countrymen in 2024, when Canada went to the Paris Olympics with gold medal ambitions. But the team fell short of the podium, losing to Victor Wembanyama and France in the quarterfinals. Murray struggled throughout the tournament while trying to play through multiple lingering injuries from the NBA playoffs. only six points on 29% shooting.

Later that summer, he signed a four-year, $209 million contract extension with the Nuggets. It went into effect this past season, after a 2025 summer without international competition. Murray often cited his ample offseason recovery time as one of the reasons for his career year.

The FIBA World Cup will be played in Qatar from Aug. 27 to Sept. 12, 2027. for the 12-team Olympic field out of that tournament, in addition to Team USA (which automatically qualifies as the host country). Los Angeles will host the Olympics from July 14-30, 2028.

Nuggets center Nikola Jokic will be with the Serbian national team later this summer during a pair of World Cup qualifying windows, head coach Dusan Alimpijevic said recently. It will be his third consecutive summer suiting up for Serbia, after the Olympics in 2024 and the EuroBasket tournament in 2025. The last time Jokic took a summer off from international competition was in 2023, when he missed the World Cup to recover from Denver’s championship run.

That is what the NBA’s Western Conference Finals have become. The Thunder players excel as floppers, spending more time on the floor than Swiffer. They bait officials into calling fouls.

And it extends to defense for both the Thunder and Spurs.

They grab. They pull. They push. They know the refs won’t call fouls on everything, so they see what they can get away with every time.

Why bring this up? This is what the Nuggets face in their pursuit of a championship, and why their postseason failure represents a trend, unlike the Avs’ aberration.

Even after getting swept, the Avs could return to the Stanley Cup Final with a new coach and a plugged-in power play.

The Nuggets? They are in a galaxy far, far away from the NBA Star Wars between the Thunder and Spurs.

As I have said, taking a step back to move forward makes the most sense. There is no reason to run it back, other than to sell merch and continue the home sellout streak.

Rumors and proposals are starting to percolate, revealing the steep incline the Nuggets face to remain a championship contender.

ESPN reported this week that the . The latter requires a pause for laughter.

Braun has one of the league’s worst contracts — $21.6 million per season over the next five years — an extension I advocated for and watched become an immovable glacier because of an ankle injury.

Braun, 25, backslid in an alarming way, never regaining his footing after getting hurt and suffering setbacks. He averaged 12 points last season, shot a career-low 30.1 % from 3, and was passing up layups in the playoffs, while he was insisting he was the team’s leader even when he was nowhere near a shutdown defender.

Other than that.

The only path forward is to see if Braun can regain his shine with a productive offseason and improved health.

The Nuggets would be selling at an all-time low.  And where would he go? Who would take him? Shedding the contract would involve connecting Braun to a deal involving Jamal Murray or Aaron Gordon. Same goes for Zeke Nnaji, obviously.

The easiest play is the cleanest. Trade Johnson, who has an expiring contract. He represents a functional piece for a contender and could bring back desperately needed draft capital. Then attempt to move Gordon to re-sign Peyton Watson.

The Nuggets will not be better next season, but they will be better positioned to regroup in 2029 for one last spending spree in the final years of Nikola Jokic’s contract.

Hard Labor: MLB owners proposed a salary cap in collective bargaining talks, showing the difficult road ahead. The owners want to fundamentally change the sport by tying a cap ($245.3 million) and a floor ($171.2 million) to competitive balance. In case you are wondering, the Rockies current payroll sits $54 million below the floor.

The MLBPA does not want to restrict players’ earning power and believes competitive balance can be tied to front-office competence, not spending limits, when looking at teams like Tampa Bay, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. Let’s be real, most owners are motivated more by franchise valuation than winning. A cap creates cost certainty. End of story. The difference is that the players are unlikely to have the public on their side in these talks because of payroll disparity–see the Dodgers. Baseball is on a heater, benefiting from pace of play changes and the ABS system, and does not have Cal Ripken’s consecutive-games-played streak or the fake muscled-fueled home run chase of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to save the game if another season is lost. Deadlines spur action. Next February will determine how serious the sides are at avoiding a lengthy lockout that costs games.

Final thought: Elimination games feature raw emotions. But Nathan MacKinnon not talking after Tuesday’s loss was unprofessional and inexcusable for one of the NHL’s best players.

Now it’s another mission accomplished.

Ten seasons into his career, Murray is All-NBA for the first time, the league announced Sunday. He made the cut comfortably, slotting in on All-NBA Third Team with the 12th-most total votes. Fifteen players are honored with the All-NBA label, spread across three “teams” of five.

Selections became position-less in 2024 after the previous system required voters to include two guards, two forwards and one center on each team.

Murray, 29, appeared on 95 out of 100 ballots. He received 27 votes for Second Team and 68 for Third Team.

Murray averaged 25.4 points, 4.5 rebounds and 7.1 assists this season — all career-highs. He shot 48.3% from the field and 43.5% from the 3-point line (also career-highs), helping the Nuggets to 54 regular-season wins before their first-round exit from the NBA playoffs. He was recently voted runner-up for the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award as well. Playing 75 games, his most since 2018-19, he led Denver to a 10-6 record when Nikola Jokic was out with a knee injury in January.

Jokic was named First Team All-NBA as expected at the league’s unveiling Sunday. He was the MVP runner-up this season for a second consecutive year. Murray is his first teammate to make an All-NBA team alongside him.

The Nuggets, Thunder and Pistons were the only three teams with multiple All-NBA selections.

Here is the full list of players.

First Team All-NBA, 2026

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Thunder

Nikola Jokic, Nuggets

Victor Wembanyama, Spurs

Luka Doncic, Lakers

Cade Cunningham, Pistons

Second Team All-NBA, 2026

Jaylen Brown, Celtics

Kawhi Leonard, Clippers

Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers

Kevin Durant, Rockets

Jalen Brunson, Knicks

Third Team All-NBA, 2026

Tyrese Maxey, 76ers

Jamal Murray, Nuggets

Jalen Johnson, Hawks

Jalen Duren, Pistons

Chet Holmgren, Thunder

Is the No. 1 seed overrated? Yes and no

Everybody knows how unprecedented it is that seven different teams have won the last seven NBA Finals. But here’s an interesting, less-discussed subplot of the league’s parity era: With Detroit’s Game 7 loss to the Cavs last weekend, a No. 1 seed has been eliminated before the conference finals in seven straight years (and eight of the last nine). That’s quite a surprising streak in a league that’s generally considered the least upset-prone of the major American sports.

• 2026: Pistons (60-22) lost 4-3 to No. 4 Cavaliers in Round 2
• 2025: Cavaliers (64-18) lost 4-1 to No. 4 Pacers in Round 2
• 2024:���ճ�ܲԻ��� (57-25) lost 4-2 to No. 5 Mavericks in Round 2
• 2023: Bucks (58-24) lost 4-1 to No. 8 Heat in Round 1
• 2022: Suns (64-18) lost 4-3 to No. 4 Mavericks in Round 2
• 2021: 76ers (49-23) lost 4-3 to No. 5 Hawks in Round 2
• 2020: Bucks (56-17) lost 4-1 to No. 5 Heat in Round 2
• 2018: Raptors (59-23) lost 4-0 to No. 4 Cavaliers in Round 2

It’s enough to at least raise the question of whether seeding is overrated.

The answer to that question remains a definitive no.

The surviving No. 1 seed has still won the last three championships, sustaining a trend that spans the history of the NBA: The best team usually wins. Upsets may be a little more prevalent, but OKC, Boston and . The regular season has remained a pretty good indicator of which team is going to hoist the Larry O’Brien.

A No. 1 seed has won roughly two-thirds of all championships. Only eight No. 3 seeds have won, and only two teams seeded lower than that have pulled it off — the 1969 Celtics (No. 4) and 1995 Rockets (No. 6). The third-place Nuggets felt like they had a shot as they entered the playoffs this year, but they would have been an anomaly.

Pour one out for the Pacers

The closest any recent sub-three has gotten to the title was last June, of course, when Indiana’s magical run was cut tragically short in Game 7 of the Finals. Tyrese Haliburton’s torn Achilles tendon is a “what if” for all eternity. The Pacers deserved some good karma. In the middle of a lost season, they took one of the gutsiest risks you’ll see in the NBA — trading their 2026 first-round pick, top-four protected, to the Clippers for center Ivica Zubac.

The logic behind it made sense: The four headliners of this draft class could fit Indiana’s roster and immediately contribute to a win-now cause. Fifth or lower, the Pacers were willing to lose for a veteran of Zubac’s stature.

The game of chance was nonetheless nerve-racking. After finishing with the league’s second-worst record, the Pacers entered the draft lottery with a 52% chance to keep their pick and a 48% chance to forfeit it to Los Angeles. The lowest it could fall was sixth. It was a coin toss.

If any team in the NBA deserved to win a coin toss, it was them.

They walked away empty-handed. The pick fell to No. 5, to a Clippers team in the middle of a salary cap circumvention scandal, rubbing salt on the wound.

Indiana, with AJ Dybantsa, Caleb Wilson, or Cameron Boozer coming off the bench, would have been a sight to behold. Instead, the book is closed on one of the most cursed years any franchise has ever endured. (We haven’t even mentioned Haliburton’s case of shingles.) If the Pacers want a second chance on the biggest stage, they’ll have to make their own luck.

East could be a gauntlet in ’26-27

A perennial laughingstock compared to the Western Conference, the East should be fun and fierce next season. Indiana’s anticipated return to form (even without a lottery pick) adds a proven title contender to the mix. Boston, New York, Detroit and Cleveland shouldn’t be any less dangerous on paper, roster changes pending.

Orlando was a team considered talented enough to make a deep run this season, and now Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner will have a new coach to offer a fresh perspective on how they can optimize that talent. Philly’s health is fickle, but the upside is evident after a first-round upset of Boston. Atlanta and Toronto are playoff teams on the rise, with the trade resources to power up. Then there’s Charlotte, one of the most compelling teams of all — another ascending core with reason to believe it can win the conference after finishing 2025-26 on a 33-15 surge.

Giannis Antetokounmpo looms over the entire landscape. His exit from Milwaukee represents a paradigm shift. Wherever he gets traded in the next month will leap ahead as a contender. Any number of East hopefuls could go after him.

This all leaves a feeling that the Pistons were a little too content to treat 2025-26 as a house-money year. They handled the trade deadline the same way Oklahoma City did in 2024 — by doing nothing to address obvious holes in a first-place roster. They preferred to see things through in their current form, gain playoff experience and evaluate next steps afterward. The Thunder had so much premier talent that GM Sam Presti needed only to supplement his stars in the summer of 2024. Detroit appears farther from a championship, more in need of substantial upgrades — not just better shooting around Cade Cunningham, but a secondary star capable of creating off the dribble.

Those needs were already apparent in February, when a more manageable path through the East lay ahead. By waiting, the Pistons might not have helped themselves. What if the house money year turns out to be their best opportunity?

Where do the Timberwolves go from here?

The West should remain the more top-heavy conference, at least. on Monday night was proof of that. Twenty-eight general managers will wake up in a cold sweat at some point this summer, jolted out of a nightmare about that game.

Victor Wembanyama, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the juggernauts surrounding them aren’t going anywhere.

Even if Presti has to make sacrifices to the second apron, his roster is such a cornucopia of talent that it’s difficult to imagine OKC doing anything except winning 60 games over and over again. Meanwhile, Wembanyama has broken basketball.

It’s a league-wide existential crisis. But it has to be more dramatic than the other superstar-laden teams in the West. Teams with a player good enough to incentivize aggressive roster moves that are nonetheless unlikely to close the gap. Teams like the Nuggets. And the team that has their number.

For as much as they’ve crossed paths and evolved into a box-office matchup, Minnesota and Denver seem to form a pretty clear secondary tier in the conference right now. The Wolves pushed San Antonio to six, but they went out of the playoffs with a whimper for the third consecutive year of Anthony Edwards’ prime. They’ve trailed by 30 points in each of their last three elimination games.

Their superstar is much younger than Denver’s, but he’s stuck in the middle of SGA and Wemby’s generations. The Nuggets at least did themselves a favor by capturing a title before this Thunder-Spurs thing became a problem.

Tim Connelly is no stranger to blockbuster trades, and it feels like there’s another one coming this offseason. The Timberwolves need a pure point guard to spare Edwards after he spent a year playing out of position. They also need a frontcourt reboot — the Julius Randle-Rudy Gobert combo may have reached its ceiling already. New York is emerging as a potential winner in the KAT trade. It doesn’t help that Donte DiVincenzo is likely out for most of next season.

This all gets at a central theme: the summer trade market could be busy and messy, with many good teams desperately grasping for greatness. Wembanyama is going to prompt some intriguing, possibly rash, decisions.

A trendy pick to skyrocket in the West

For a few years now, there’s been at least one young Western Conference team that catapults up the standings from the lottery more dramatically than anyone predicts. This season, it was the Spurs with a 28-win increase from 13th place to second. The year before, it was the Rockets going from 11th to second. In 2023-24, the Thunder jumped from 10th to first.

Everyone has eyes on Charlotte in the East. In the West, Utah wants to be that team next season. The Jazz loaded up at the trade deadline by acquiring Jaren Jackson Jr., waited out one last year of tanking and got rewarded with the No. 2 overall pick. They could have an opening day lineup of Keyonte George, Darryn Peterson (or another top prospect), Lauri Markkanen, JJJ and Walker Kessler, with Ace Bailey off the bench. They have the assets to make other aggressive moves.

If anyone is going to steal a top-six seed in the West from one of this year’s contenders, Utah will be a popular pick to be that team. Bad news for Denver: It’s yet another divisional opponent trying to win, along with OKC, Minnesota and the lurking Blazers. Life is not getting easier for Nikola Jokic and company.

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.

“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,

How many other players can we say that about on the Nuggets’ roster? Four? Five? The list begins with Jamal Murray, includes Christian Braun, maybe a few others, and finishes with Gordon.

It felt like each question on Friday circled back to Mr. Nugget.

President Josh Kroenke insisted “everything is on the table” this offseason, but his answers suggested moving on from Gordon is not one of them.

Nuggets Nation, rejoice at your own risk. Everybody loves Gordon. He has endeared himself to teammates and fans alike because of his unselfishness and toughness.

He plays well. He plays hurt. But he no longer plays enough.

And that is why the leadership press conference came off as underwhelming.

Injuries and complacency were cited for the disappointing first-round exit. Sure, coach David Adelman — he is not going anywhere as Kroenke has “full faith” in him — went into the weeds about needing more ball handlers against pressure and better defensive rebounding.

But much of the talk centered on health and motivation. Those are reasons for the Nuggets’ postseason flop. They are easy to identify. What was not offered were solutions, just a lot of word salad and crossed fingers.

Kroenke mentioned “running it back” as a potential best option so many times that it was like he saw the Broncos’ offseason and said, “Hold my drink.”

As plans go, static would be a mistake.

There is no way Kroenke can digest the postseason, remove emotion and decide to stand pat. Hope is not a strategy unless you are the 2019-2025 Rockies.

The Nuggets are too smart to do something so basic. Nuggets Nation deserves better.

The Nuggets are not a title contender. I was hoping Kroenke would look to his left (Adelman) and right (co-general managers Ben Tenzer and Jon Wallace) and break the news.

Instead, they ran out the tired trope that any team with Jokic remains in a championship window. He is responsible for much of their success. And he is also their crutch. We have Jokic. We are fine.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Nuggets need more athleticism, more length, more anger, more hunger.

Kroenke acknowledged that he was frustrated by the Nuggets’ response in Games 3 and 4, but stopped short of admitting it revealed a locker-room fissure. His team got curb stomped, and reading between the lines on Friday, you would have thought it was because the Nuggets waited too long to give Tyus Jones minutes to initiate the offense and were too dependent on Jokic’s 3-pointers.

There are annual lessons in sports about the dangers of standing pat. Especially about players. Don’t love them. Like them. Be real. Be transparent. And if you cannot do either of those? Be willing to change.

If another ring is the goal, it must go beyond trading Cam Johnson and signing Peyton Watson.

Instead, the Nuggets talked about Gordon as if there were only one path forward: helping him heal, physically and emotionally.

This is admirable. It just doesn’t seem logical.

Gordon has missed 77 games the past two seasons because of a battery of calf and hamstring injuries. He turns 31 in September as he enters his 13th season.

What we have watched is a former Superman fighting his body and his mind in a public setting that we wished were private.

His older brother, Drew Gordon, died in a car accident on May 30, 2024. Gordon has said that he has struggled to process his grief, and he believes it has contributed to the endless leg issues.

Everyone deals with loss differently. There is no blueprint.

The Nuggets aim to assist Gordon.

“Aaron is one of my favorite human beings I have come across in all of our wide world of sports. What he has been through since we won a championship is simply tragic and would be difficult for anybody to deal with,” Kroenke said. “To have to go through it (in public) and knowing what he does for his family behind the scenes, it is very demanding on the human body. We have to help him get better at it. That����ap absolutely something we have to talk about. We have to look in the mirror and say, ‘AG how can we help you?’^”

When he is right, so are the Nuggets. But are they confusing loyalty with reality?

No one can convince me that there is not a market for Gordon’s contract, even with $103.5 million remaining if he exercises a 2028-29 player option.

Calling the Celtics to see if they would consider swapping Derrick White for Gordon is a must. All they can say is no.

I don’t sense any motivation for a deal. Gordon is not only their guy but also a favorite of Jokic. And the idea of upsetting Jokic before he signs a four-year extension is unnerving.

That leaves a narrow road for improvement. Heal Gordon. And perform some nips and tucks. If shipping out Gordon remains a non-starter, then the Nuggets must get honest about Jokic.

He needs a rim protector. There are too many nights when he is uninterested in defense; his focus is on quickly grabbing the ball as it goes through the net to throw an outlet pass. Gordon is a terrific defender, and there should be discussions with him about focusing on that side of the ball and letting others — like Watson — pick up the scoring.

Regardless, Denver has to add a deterrent in the paint. Someone who can elevate and intimidate. The latter was so lacking against the Timberwolves that it was embarrassing.

The easy thing to do is keep the roster similar, believing that with an overhauled training staff, the team’s injury report won’t look like an episode of “The Pitt.” And to be clear, there must be changes behind the scenes.

It leaves a trade of Johnson as the move to clear the runway for Watson.

That is a little thing. The heavy lifting is navigating the weighty stuff surrounding Gordon.

You know Jokic wants him to stay. The Nuggets’ brass loves him. And fans constantly ask: How can the Nuggets win without him?

The better question: Can the Nuggets still win with him?

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.