{"id":770668,"date":"2026-06-26T01:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T01:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/770668\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T01:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T01:33:13","slug":"nuggets-notes-jokic-watson-jones-pickett-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/770668\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuggets Notes: Jokic, Watson, Jones, Pickett, Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asked on Wednesday about the possibility of signing star center Nikola Jokic<\/a> to a maximum-salary extension this offseason, Nuggets vice president of basketball operations Ben Tenzer said league rules prevent him from getting into specifics, but he added that Jokic\u2019s end-of-season comments about wanting to be a Nugget \u201cforever\u201d<\/a> are a very positive sign for the team, per Vinny Benedetto of The Denver Gazette<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve heard what he said about his happiness here,\u201d Tenzer said. \u201cWe feel really comfortable with that relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nuggets\u2019 top basketball executives addressed upcoming decisions on several other players during Wednesday\u2019s media session, with Tenzer indicating that the team feels good about Peyton Watson<\/a>\u2018s situation ahead of restricted free agency and hopes he\u2019s \u201chere a long time.\u201d Executive VP of player personnel Jon Wallace noted that Denver also wants to re-sign another RFA-to-be, forward Spencer Jones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpencer\u2019s done himself a lot good, a lot of favors this past year, specifically how he stepped in, defended, made shots,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cHe was just a big part of what we did, but we feel confident. He\u2019s a homegrown guy. You want to reward those guys with them sticking to the plan and really developing themselves. We feel confident where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nuggets also hold a $2.41MM team option on 2023 second-round pick Jalen Pickett<\/a>, but they weren\u2019t ready to commit to a decision on that option as of Wednesday. Tenzer told reporters that the front office is \u201cstill evaluating,\u201d as Benedetto relays.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more on the Nuggets:<\/p>\n

Denver began the draft with the No. 26 pick, but traded out of the first round<\/a> on Tuesday. Wallace said trading up was also a consideration and that the team would\u2019ve targeted a point guard in that scenario, writes\u00a0Bennett Durando of The Denver Post<\/a> (subscription required). However, he said it \u201cgot a little expensive\u201d to move up, and the Nuggets didn\u2019t want to overpay. \u201cIt was a heavy point guard draft,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cI think everybody in this room would agree that there were a lot of guys we liked (in the first round). But they just didn\u2019t fall to our area. We tried to make some moves to get up. It just didn\u2019t work. We\u2019re not the only team that wants elite point guards.\u201d
\nSources tell Durando that the Nuggets felt as if there was a significant drop-off in talent after the first 20 picks or so, which is one reason the team opted to move down from No. 26 to No. 35. Denver used that pick to draft Arkansas big man Trevon Brazile<\/a>, then selected St. John\u2019s forward Bryce Hopkins<\/a> 49th overall. \u201cWe saw some guys that addressed some needs,\u201d Wallace said, \u201cin terms of length, recovery, defensive ability, versatility, rebounding, toughness. So we saw the opportunity to do that with guys who\u2019ve been coached hard, played in good programs.\u201d
\nAccording to Tenzer, the Nuggets are still weighing whether to sign Hopkins to a standard or two-way contract, Durando writes. It sounds like Brazile will be on the standard 15-man roster.
\nWhen ESPN cameras showed a live feed of the Nuggets\u2019 draft room during the draft ahead of the No. 26 pick, team governor Josh Kroenke looked agitated, leading to a round of speculation on social media about what was going on. Tenzer and Wallace laughed off that moment, with Wallace suggesting it was \u201cblown out of proportion,\u201d as Durando details in another Denver Post story<\/a> (subscription required). A team source tells Durando that the Spurs didn\u2019t tell Denver which prospect to draft on their behalf until the last minute, delaying the Nuggets\u2019 attempts to complete the trade and call in the pick. \u201cWe were waiting for the other side to kind of finalize what the decision was, and at that time, it was like, you know, you\u2019re on the clock,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cSo you\u2019re kind of waiting, and it was like, \u2018Hey, what did they decide?\u2019 So it was one of those types of issues. It wasn\u2019t an internal issue by any means.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked on Wednesday about the possibility of signing star center Nikola Jokic to a maximum-salary extension this offseason,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,6903,301,187,3943,1361,3787,6,253,302,1146,26517,14704],"class_list":["post-770668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denver-nuggets","tag-basketball","tag-bryce-hopkins","tag-denver","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-denvernuggets","tag-jalen-pickett","tag-josh-kroenke","tag-nba","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-nuggets","tag-peyton-watson","tag-spencer-jones","tag-trevon-brazile"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116813837355360487","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}