The Denver Nuggets will not be trading Nikola Jokic, obviously, and that was clarified on Thursday by team executive Ben Tenzer, who attempted to put the genie back in the bottle after a strange comment was made by the boss, Josh Kroenke, earlier this week.
During an introductory press conference for the team’s newly named co-executive vice presidents in Tenzer and Jonathan Wallace, Kroenke stole the headlines with a poorly worded quote trying to explain the Nuggets’ aversion to the new second apron in the luxury tax. In it, he mentioned a hypothetical situation where the Nuggets would be forced to trade the three-time MVP.
Kroenke’s employees say his comments were misrepresented.
“I would just urge you to listen to the quote again, because if you listen to it, you will realize Josh didn’t say that, and we would never trade Nikola,” Tenzer said.
“I would urge you to listen again, because that is not what was said,” Tenzer said when asked a follow-up.
This is what Kroenke said:
“From an ownership perspective, around the second apron, there were a lot of conversations last summer about (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) 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 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.
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 not added 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 extension 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.
Some took Kroenke’s quote too far, photoshopping Jokic into other teams’ jerseys, and it became a talking point on ESPN. But those things are obvious when you bring up these things publicly, even as a hypothetical to demonstrate your larger point.
Misrepresented or misspoken, either way the Nuggets put themselves in a situation they didn’t want to be in this week, and everyone in Denver will hope Jokic is simply at the stable with his horses and didn’t hear about any of this. We’ll find out soon what he thinks, as he’s eligible to sign an extension this summer, which he can not do. Maybe it’s not too telling since Jokic could earn more money if he waits to sign an extension, and he’s already inked through 2026-27, with a player option for the following season, so there is no real rush — just optics. But this week has been an operation in optics for the Nuggets, and it hasn’t gone well.
