DENVER — One of the reasons the Denver Nuggets did not re-sign Kentavious Caldwell-Pope last summer is because of the fear of a nightmare scenario where they would have to trade three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, and that’s according to the big boss, Josh Kroenke.

In an introductory press conference for the team’s newly named co-executive vice presidents in Ben Tenzer and Jonathan Wallace, Kroenke made waves with some strange comments about Jokic. Kroenke both discussed how the best player in franchise history may not sign an extension this summer and, unprompted, brought up trading Jokic.

There’s a reason for the first part, and that is simply that Jokic could earn more money if he waits to sign an extension. He’s already inked through 2026-27, with a player option for the following season, so there is no real rush — just optics.
The other response was much more bizarre. Unprompted, when talking about the ramifications of the NBA’s recently instituted second apron in the luxury tax, Kroenke shared this bit.

“From an ownership perspective, around the second apron, there were a lot of conversations last summer about KCP and us re-signing him, and around the second apron,” Kroenke said. “It was a fascinating one because we really did every exercise looking through retaining him and what that meant under the new rules.”

“For us as an organization going into that second apron is not necessarily something that we’re scared of, I think that there are rules around it that we needed to be very careful of with our injury history, the wrong person gets injured and very quickly you’re into a scenario where that I never want to have to contemplate and that’s trading No. 15 (Nikola Jokic), “Kroenke said. “We’re very conscious of that pushing forward, providing the resources that we can when the moment arrives, but that second apron. Is it a hard cap? I’m not 100% sure. But it’s something that teams are very aware of.”

The second apron was born in the latest collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and its players’ union. The goal of it is to hurt team building on the court as much as going deep into the luxury tax hurts owners’ wallets. The owners put their own guardrails on spending after the Golden State Warriors proved you can double down as an over-the-cap team and keep getting better players so long as you’re willing to take on a hefty tax bill.

The three most pointed penalties for entering the second apron are as follows:

The inability to aggregate salaries in a trade — preventing teams from swapping two $5 million players for one that makes $10 million.
The loss of the Mid-Level Exception, an annual lever teams can pull to sign decent players to more than the minimum, despite being over the salary cap.
Frozen first-round pick seven years into the future that you cannot trade, and if you’re in it three out of five years, your first-rounder seven years out will be the last pick in the first round, no matter what.

The Nuggets were about $5 million below the second apron in 2024-25 and would’ve blown through it had they simply re-signed KCP and didn’t add Dario Saric. Caldwell-Pope signed a three-year $66 million deal with Orlando and has already been traded to Memphis. Denver likely would’ve been able to dip back under the second apron this summer and are almost guaranteed to be under it for the 2025-26 season but may wind up in that territory when Aaron Gordon’s extension kicks in for 2026-27 as well as the yet-to-be-signed Christian Braun’s if Michael Porter Jr. accepts his player option.

Simply said, the Nuggets are an expensive group, as are most title contenders, and that comes with challenges and risks. Kroenke isn’t even necessarily wrong that there is a nightmare scenario, which played out in Phoenix, where entering into the second apron for Kevin Durant risked their star Devin Booker. But it took a lot of instability and short-term thinking to get there.

Trading Jokic is just not something any Nuggets fan, let alone the owner of the team, should be putting out into the universe. The star Serbian has never indicated even a hint that he wants to leave Colorado for anywhere but his home country — and in today’s NBA, that’s rare. And it’s hard to envision how keeping a player, like KCP, that was key to a title, less than 13 months after letting him go, could lead to such a death spiral.

Kroenke will be more involved with the Nuggets as Tenzer and Wallace settle in. The three men are tasked with building around Jokic, though there’s always some level of fear that the team’s star could leave — even from the top boss, apparently.