The 2024-25 NBA season has officially come to a close after the Oklahoma City Thunder’s victory in Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night. The Thunder capped off one of the greatest seasons in NBA history en route to winning the title, and are the clear favorite heading into the 2025-26 campaign. However, the Denver Nuggets are right behind them after they were on the doorstep of eliminating the Thunder in the Conference Semifinals.
ESPN wasted no time in releasing its power rankings for next season, and the Nuggets slotted in at third place, just behind the Thunder and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Their efforts against the Thunder in the second round are clearly holding a lot of weight after the Thunder dismantled the Timberwolves en route to the title, and the Nuggets are thought highly of, despite their lack of picks in this week’s draft and lack of cap space to make significant roster changes surrounding Jokic, unless a major trade were to happen.
The Nuggets were previously ranked seventh in the rankings, and their four-spot jump is the second-highest among teams in the top half of the league, only behind Minnesota.
Now that they finally have the general manager problem sorted out (by not actually naming a general manager, and instead naming two different positions that practically result in co-general managers), the Nuggets can look to the more important issue at hand, building a better roster surrounding Nikola Jokic to stop wasting valuable years of his prime. The injuries in the playoffs didn’t help by any means, but only having six trustworthy guys to play in a playoff rotation only compounded that issue.
The Nuggets being ranked so high also has to do with the injuries in the Eastern Conference, as the Indiana Pacers and Boston Celtics are ranked lower than they should be because of the Achilles injuries to Tyrese Haliburton and Jayson Tatum, which will likely hold those stars out until the start of the 2026-27 season. The Houston Rockets, with their new star in Kevin Durant, are in fifth place just behind the Nuggets, and the Golden State Warriors (eighth) and Los Angeles Lakers (10th) wrap up the Western Conference teams in the top 10.
The upcoming offseason is arguably the most important one in franchise history for the Nuggets. This year’s rendition of the team was clearly not good enough to win a championship, and they have to make whatever moves they can with the limited cap space and trade assets they have to maximize the rest of Jokic’s prime. While they have some momentum to build off from the recent playoff run, and people are ranking them high including the oddsmakers, there’s a lot of work to do in order to make it back to the mountaintop.
