The Denver Nuggets went toe-to-toe with the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Semifinals as they took the 68-win team to a winner-take-all Game 7, but ended up falling short in that deciding game. However, Nuggets team president and governor Josh Kroenke felt that the Nuggets lost the series before ever stepping foot on the floor in OKC on Sunday.
“We took the Oklahoma City Thunder, who is playing some of the best basketball in the league right now, if not the best right now, to seven games, which is great. Took a great team to seven games,” Kroenke said Thursday. “That series could’ve been 4-0 the other way. That series could’ve been 4-1 us. I don’t think we lost Game 7 during Game 7, I thought we lost Game 7 during Games 4 and 5.”
Josh Kroenke believes the Nuggets lost Game 7 against OKC in Games 4 and 5… his thoughts on how close the Nuggets are right now pic.twitter.com/6a9cwqCzhJ
— Jake Shapiro (@Shapalicious) May 22, 2025
The Nuggets held a fourth quarter lead in both Game 4 and Game 5, but weren’t able to hold on as poor shooting plagued the team down the stretch both times. In Game 4, Denver shot 7-for-23 from the field, 1-for-12 from distance and 3-for-8 from the charity stripe. In Game 5, they went 5-for-21 from the field and 1-for-12 from distance once again. Nikola Jokic was the only player to make a field goal until a Jamal Murray layup in garbage time.
If Denver won either of those games, they would’ve been up 3-1 or 3-2 in the series with a chance to close out the Thunder and the MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, at home instead of having to try on the road. As seen in the blowout loss in Game 7, the Thunder’s rocking crowd gave them too much momentum for Denver to handle, as an avalanche of turnovers put the game away in the third quarter.
Denver held at least an eight-point lead in each of the final four games of the Conference Semifinals, with a double-digit lead in Games 5-7.
Kroenke led his press conference Thursday with the announcement that interim head coach David Adelman was being made Denver’s full time head coach after his successful stint in the wake of the Michael Malone firing. He, and the rest of the Nuggets organization, have a long offseason ahead as they try and get Denver back to the mountaintop and to stop wasting years of Jokic’s prime.
