The Denver Nuggets have paid Nikola Jokic handsomely during his incredible NBA career.
And he’s been worth every single penny.
Yet, the Nuggets still owe Jokic a lot, and this offseason is proving they know it.
If Denver didn’t take the kid from Serbia with the 41st pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, who knows where they’d be? Probably irrelevant. Certainly without an NBA championship. That selection, during a Taco Bell commercial nonetheless, changed everything.
Jokic has won three of the last five MVPs and has a strong case he should’ve won five in a row. He’s the best basketball player on Earth. And a run of Nuggets basketball like this is something we’ll never see in our lives again.
It’s easy to say don’t take good things for granted. But seriously, don’t take this stretch by Jokic for granted. It was hard to see the Nuggets ever throwing us a parade. The league wasn’t originally built around teams like Denver winning it all.
Jokic changed that forever when he put the entire city on his back in 2023, en route to a title and an NBA Finals MVP.
But the last two years have been frustrating. Back-to-back second-round losses in Game 7 had Jokic perplexed. He wasn’t willing to say the Nuggets could’ve won it at all after the defeat by the Thunder, simply because they didn’t.
For the first time in the entire Jokic era it felt like there were some cracks. Everyone just assumed he was happy in the Mile High City and would play his entire career here no matter what.
Then, when Josh Kroenke made a bizarre comment about the doomsday scenario being trading Jokic, eyebrows were raised. The new front office, comprised of Ben Tenzer and Jonathan Wallace, was basically anonymous. Fans were nervous and rightfully so.
Oh, what a difference a few weeks makes.
Tenzer and Wallace have hit it out of the park. The trade of Michael Porter Jr. for Cam Johnson was brilliant. Bringing home Bruce Brown was a no-brainer. And you have to love the additions of Tim Hardaway Jr. and Jonas Valanciunas, all while dumping the horrible Dario Saric contract.
It was up to the Nuggets executives to please Jokic, something by all accounts, has been done. That’s a massive sigh of relief for every basketball fan in Denver and Jokic supporters around the world.
They owed No. 15 this. An offseason he could be proud of, not just running it back with the same stale core and painfully thin bench. It was time to push all the chips in, for Jokic’s sake, showing the franchise is committed to getting him another championship ring.
You know Jokic will do his part, he always does, but adding more around him was critical. Between Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Christian Braun, Johnson, Brown, Hardaway and Valanciunas, the Nuggets have an eight-man playoff rotation.
That’s not even counting guys like DaRon Holmes II, Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther who could still crack that group. The Thunder and Pacers showed depth is the name of the game, and the Nuggets are paying attention. That’s simply huge.
Denver doesn’t want to be a forgotten one-time recent champion like the Toronto Raptors or Milwaukee Bucks. And thankfully, the actions of Kroenke, Tenzer and Wallace are showing that.
Yes, it’s all for the betterment of the Nuggets. But let’s be honest, it’s also to keep Jokic happy and make sure he plays his entire NBA tenure here.
For a few days, things seemed a little flimsy. That wasn’t how anyone either inside or outside the organization ever wants to feel. Luckily, the bad vibes are gone and we’re firmly back on track.
Jokic is this close to passing John Elway as the greatest athlete in the history of Denver sports. If everything goes right, and the Nuggets do win another title this year, he’ll achieve that.
It looks like it’s all falling into place.
