The first round of the 2025 NBA Draft is in the books, and while the Denver Nuggets didn’t make any selections in Wednesday night’s first round, there was plenty of action for them to sit back and watch. They had their drama earlier in the week with Vice Chairman of KSE Josh Kroenke’s press conference — in which he unfathomably brought up the idea of trading Nikola Jokic — and now have the ability to see what other front offices are up to.

While the Nuggets’ brass, headlined by Kroenke, has made some questionable decisions ever since winning a championship two years ago, they are much better than what some other teams have to deal with. Especially given with what the New Orleans Pelicans and the Brooklyn Nets did in the first round of the draft last night, the Nuggets front office is in a much higher tier than some of these other teams.

For reference, the Pelicans moved up 10 picks to select Maryland’s Derik Queen, a prospect who has a lot of things to fine tune, and gave up an unprotected pick in next year’s draft that is likely to be in the lottery. For anyone who doesn’t know, the 2026 NBA Draft is slated to be one of the deepest and most talented drafts in history. This is just one of the many blunders that front office has made since trading away Anthony Davis in the 2019 offseason.

Over the last year, the Pelicans turned

Dyson Daniels
Larry Nance Jr.
Brandon Ingram
CJ McCollum
2025 FRP (via Lakers)
2026 FRP (via Pacers)
2026 FRP (most favorable of Pels or Bucks)
2027 FRP (least favorable of Pels or Bucks)

into…

Dejounte Murray
Jordan Poole
Saddiq Bey…

— pickuphoop (@pickuphoop) June 26, 2025

The Nets had five first round picks on Wednesday night and proceeded to use three of them on point guards with questionable jump shots, one of them on a guard in a center’s body whose game likely won’t translate well to the NBA, and the fifth on a wing who can kind of shoot the ball from deep and do nothing else on offense.

Both franchises decisions left the league shocked, and had fans all around laughing at them.

There’s a reason why neither of these franchises have sniffed success recently, and it’s because their front offices make one puzzling move after another.

Again, Nuggets fans are very frustrated with how the team has been run since the championship, and that’s totally understandable. However, it’s hard to win a title, and that’s something that the franchise will always have under its belt for the rest of time. The front office has still put together a top-four team in the Western Conference and is consistently winning big games after being in the dumps of the league a decade ago.

Yes, the Nuggets taking Jokic with the 41st pick in the 2014 Draft has a lot to do with that, but that wasn’t a one-off pick that the franchise just stumbled upon. They had scouts out in Serbia while Jokic was growing up and knew that they found a diamond in the rough before anyone else in the league did.

Injury luck has also played a factor in limiting Denver’s success over the years, highlighted by Michael Porter Jr. and Jamal Murray along with the untimely setbacks to Aaron Gordon, Russell Westbrook and DaRon Holmes II. Even with that, they have fifth-best win percentage in the league over the last decade.

Have there been bad moves made by the Nuggets front office in recent years? Without a doubt. While those moves are frustrating especially given the fact that Jokic is only getting older, the Nuggets are still one of the best teams in the league and only two years removed from a championship. It makes sense to be frustrated with what Kroenke has been doing with the team in recent years, but just remember, there are so many teams in worse situations that have a front office that continues to make bad moves over and over.