OKLAHOMA CITY — The Denver Nuggets didn’t fail this season — their front office did.
That might not be how it looks after a 125-93 drubbing in Game 7 at the hands of the Oklahoma City Thunder, or on a cold scoreboard that shows “second round exit” next to the reigning champs. But when you zoom out, remove the emotion and look at what this roster did despite the decisions that boxed them in, it becomes clear: the players squeezed every drop of success out of a lemon the front office handed them months ago.
It started last spring, when the Timberwolves downed the Nuggets in the second round. The roster was exposed, and the issues were clear. The lack of depth. The overreliance on a great starting five. The shallow shooting. The few defenders on the roster. Not enough ballhandling. The thin margin of error created by ignoring the middle and back end of the rotation.
Chillingly, the Nuggets suffered one of the worst blowouts in franchise history — again. Denver dropped more home games than they won again. And they blew a Game 7 lead. And the problems in play, not just outcome, were about the same too.
The solution this summer? Save money. Be “flexible,” whatever that means.
They declined to give Kentavious Caldwell-Pope a competitive offer, letting him leave for Orlando. It was in hopes of dodging the new second apron — this would give the Nuggets a chance to alter parts of their roster whenever they wanted. But because of now-fired general manager Calvin Booth’s other moves, Denver never had the assets to complete a trade. Instead, they dumped salary in moving Reggie Jackson.
That flexibility amounted to signing Dario Saric to the taxpayer mid-level exception. If you don’t recognize his name, I can’t blame you — he stunk and never touched the floor in the postseason, not even the few blowout losses like Sunday’s. The cherry on top was unlucky in a way given a brutal injury, but following a familiar pattern, drafting yet another rookie to the roster in DaRon Holmes, who tore his Achilles.
Even outside of Holmes’ situation, Denver has consistently drafted raw, unready prospects since Booth took over in summer 2022. It was a strategy so misaligned with their championship timeline that it’s hard to fathom how this man spent his entire life around the sport. To twist the knife further, it ran directly against now-fired head coach Michael Malone’s well-known reluctance to play young players.
And Booth just kept doubling down on his philosophy, believing it was the right way by sitting out each of the last two trade deadlines when the team was begging for veteran help. Meanwhile, every team still standing in the NBA — OKC, Indiana, Minnesota, New York — made meaningful moves in the last 15 months. The Nuggets? They saved money.
So let’s not kid ourselves. This season wasn’t lost in Game 7 or even in Game 4 or Game 5. It was lost last summer and again in February.
What Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, christian braun and Michael Porter Jr. pulled off under those circumstances is nothing short of remarkable. That group — without their standout shooting guard of the past two years — was still a wild plus-34 in the 142 minutes they spent together in the series against OKC. They pushed this absolutely awesome Thunder team that has been architected for years to the brink.
“Confidence doesn’t waver; a couple of plays here or there could have changed this series,” Gordon said after Game 7.
While the Nuggets’ main group was nearly perfectly constructed, the rest of the roster was a patch job. The major injuries to Porter and Gordon that they both played through was a sign of how desperate things were on the backside of the Nuggets roster. Where the Thunder had a bench that flipped the series for the positive, Denver’s was led by former MVP Russell Westbrook, who posted a minus-34.
Westbrook’s time in Denver has so far played out exactly how you would expect. Drama in the locker room during the season’s critical point, missed open shots and wild turnovers. It’s the same player he’s been since leaving the Thunder. But it’s the other options that doomed Denver. Peyton Watson, who was always a project, has still not proven to be a viable playoff contributor Julian Strawther, who spent the last month of the season injured, was suddenly an important name on the whiteboard. While Jalen Pickett and Hunter Tyson can’t even get on the floor unless one team is winning by 30.
And that’s not even accounting for Malone getting fired late-season — the only move ownership stepped in to make, and the one that screamed panic.
Owner Josh Kroenke’s actual message to the team on the eve of the playoffs during the best season ever from the franchise’s greatest player was, “Play hard and have fun.”
And the Nuggets did play hard. They rallied. They won a tough playoff series against the Clippers. They made it to Game 7 against this daunting juggernaut. That’s not failure — that’s pride.
Jokic, always diplomatic, gave the reality without even trying to:
“We cannot ask for somebody who didn’t play maybe 20-30 games to jump in and like, be good,” Jokic said. “But Julian, he stepped up. He was good enough. Peyton, was in the rotation, but he had some good minutes too.”
Translation: Malone didn’t play the young guys enough during the season. The team was underprepared. This left the core to do what they could with what they were given.
“It definitely seems like the teams that have longer rotations — longer benches — are the teams that are winning,” Jokic said.
You don’t have to be fluent in Serbian to know what that means. The Nuggets’ invisible bench is the reason they’re not tipping the Western Conference Finals on Tuesday. And that’s not on the players. That’s on the people who built this roster.
Which brings us back to Kroenke.
“Outside of the championship, this is the most proud I’ve been because these guys have really rallied,” After the Game 7 loss, he told ESPN.
Proud? Proud of what you forced this roster to endure? That’s like amputating someone’s leg, then cheering as they run a marathon — which they valiantly did, for 25 miles, before collapsing.
Josh should be proud, everyone in Denver should be; this was a very hardy Nuggets group. But the reason they had to be resilient to begin with is because of the decisions Kroenke made. Installing Booth as a leader after letting the respected Tim Connelly go or watching Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk — both cost-cutting moves. Allowing Booth and Malone’s relationship to get so bad comes back to Kroenke too, and his eyes being elsewhere when the Nuggets were tearing apart a the seams.
“I’m very protective of that culture at this point, and that’s why I say that I failed both Cal and Mo as a leader, because I let certain things slip to a place that they never should have been,” Kroenke said after making the firings last month. “We wound up making a decision last week that I hesitated on twice, and I needed to be better for the group, checking some personal feelings, my respect for both of them, to be a better person for the overall group.”
This team deserved help. Instead, it got hope — and “have fun.”
Now the most important decision of the offseason looms — and it can’t be missed with the clock ticking on Joker’s prime. The Nuggets must get the GM hire right. Because this team isn’t broken. It’s bruised, tired and undermanned. The car is running on fumes, not because the engine failed — but because someone forgot to refuel it and put air in the tires.
For the second straight season, the Nuggets proved to have a rock-solid core led by the generational Jokic, a flamethrowing Murray, the heart of Colorado in Gordon, MPJ’s courage and Braun’s leap.
Without real help, without a plan, without depth… their window is closed — the only way it reopens is with the right GM hire — someone who can come to Denver and deal Jokic a better hand.
This season wasn’t a failure — not really. The Nuggets gave us some of the best moments in franchise history. Their players gave us amazing moments
But the ending was bitter, and it was predictable — because the decisions that doomed them weren’t made in a huddle, they were made behind closed doors.
Now comes the most important decision of the offseason: get the GM hire right. Because Jokic isn’t asking for miracles — just a fair fight. Give him teammates, not just hope. Give him a bench, not just belief.
He’s turned Denver into a basketball town. It’s time the folks upstairs prove their urgency in cementing his legacy.
Or as Jokic put it, “I mean, we didn’t (win a championship.) So obviously we can’t. If we could, we would win it, so I don’t believe in those ‘ifs.’ We had the opportunity (and) we didn’t win, so I think we can’t (win a championship this year).”
