A lot has gone wrong for the Nuggets over the past 12 months.
Less than three weeks after Denver gave up three second-round picks to move up six spots in the 2024 draft to nab DaRon Holmes at No. 22, the rookie forward sustained a season-ending Achilles tear during his Summer League debut.
The Nuggets' only other trade during the 2024 offseason saw them give up three second-round picks to get Reggie Jackson's contract off their books. With that newly opened salary slot, they used their taxpayer mid-level exception to sign Dario Saric, who ultimately logged just 210 total minutes across 16 outings, failing to emerge as the sort of reliable frontcourt reserve the front office envisioned.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a key part of the roster that won a title in 2023, walked in free agency and Denver, already operating in tax-apron territory, wasn't in position to acquire a veteran replacement for him.
The relationship between head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth became so strained that the Nuggets decided to fire both of them with less than a week left in the 2024/25 regular season.
Somehow, despite those personnel missteps, the unlucky breaks, and the organizational turmoil, Denver earned a guaranteed playoff spot in a competitive Western Conference, won a hard-fought first-round series against a talented Clippers team, then took the eventual conference champion Thunder to a Game 7 in round two before bowing out of the postseason.
It's a testament to the talent at the top of the Nuggets' roster that, in spite all that went wrong, Denver was just a Game 7 victory away from making the NBA's final four and potentially carving out a path to another title. That top-end talent starts with Nikola Jokic, who has been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player in three of the past five seasons and had a strong case for the award in the two years he didn't win it.
As long as the Nuggets have a healthy, prime Jokic on their roster and surround him with enough complementary talent, they're capable of contending for a championship. In Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon, the club has two clear pieces of that puzzle, and Christian Braun made a strong case with his breakout 2024/25 season that he should be considered a part of Denver's core, too.
The question for the Nuggets is whether they'll be able to get enough out of the rest of their roster to supplement those impact players in the starting five. Having lost important depth pieces like Caldwell-Pope, Bruce Brown, and Jeff Green during the previous two summers, the new-look front office will have to figure out a way to use the club's limited assets to replenish that depth and get the roster back to a championship-caliber level.
The Nuggets' Offseason Plan
While I assume Denver views Jokic, Murray, Gordon, and Braun as core players going forward, I'm not sure the same can be said for Michael Porter Jr., who has been the subject of trade rumors for the last year or two and struggled mightily in the postseason as he attempted to play through a shoulder injury.
