What in the Hell Can the Nuggets Do?

[Silvie Lysandra]

Pray that someone will give them overpaid role players for their Not Stars so they can at least have depth around Jokic.. But most GMs in the league are incredibly uncreative and risk averse so they'd rather overpay mid as **** players (and it's amazing how the new CBA isn't even slowing this insanity down) rather than maximize value. It was obvious that Murray was basically a glorified Jordan Poole. It was obvious that while Aaron Gordon was a useful player, he didn't deserve a max. It was obvious that MPJ was a one dimensional shooter. Yes, you're not a target destination. Oh well. You have Nikola Jokic, someone is going to see the Nuggets as the best chance of a ring.

[NBA4Lyfe]

Seriously, they're so bad.

What are some trades/anything else they could do to make them legit contenders?

I'm not hip on all the contract stuff. But is there a way they can get Jimmy Butler? Any other all-star maybe?

when the 2019 rockets started out their season slow in the 13th spot in the west, harden went nuclear and carried players who were no longer in the nba the following szn to a 4th seed only didnt get the 2nd seed due to a clutch 3 by paul george on the final game of the season.. No excuses for joker

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[Peregrine01]

I’m not sure. The Murray contract is looking like the biggest albatross in the nba. 50-60 mil over the next 5 seasons for a guy that doesn’t look like a starting-level guard right now.

[JustBuzzin]

I’m not sure. The Murray contract is looking like the biggest albatross in the nba. 50-60 mil over the next 5 seasons for a guy that doesn’t look like a starting-level guard right now.

Hali for Murray swap who says no?

[DirtybirdGA]

Play Atlanta and everything is okay.

[HotRocks34]

Ball was popping today in Atlanta without Murray.

[celtxman]

They are the victim of the CBA. It WILL affect your team if you are a championship contender. It is so incredibly punitive where an NBA minimum salary becomes a $10 million penalty if you are over the 2nd apron. Even if there was a way to sign Bruce Brown, ultimately him and KCP could not have been kept due to the apron. They lost quality depth they couldn't replace.

The bigger issue is Jamal Murray regressing from an elite 2nd option to a mediocre 6th man at best. If Jamal Murray actually played up to his max contract, the Nuggets would at the very least be a top 4 seed.

It goes without saying you can't make a mistake on virtually any player. So you get caught in no man's land. If someone regresses, you're in trouble. If you let the player go you have no realistic way of replacing him and these regressions often happen after the contract is signed.

[Peregrine01]

I’m not sure. The Murray contract is looking like the biggest albatross in the nba. 50-60 mil over the next 5 seasons for a guy that doesn’t look like a starting-level guard right now.

Hali for Murray swap who says no?

There is literally 0 chance that Indiana takes that.

[um.]

Pretty sure the Nuggets are just moody at the moment figuring things out. They have the best player in the world on their team. Its early in the season. This is a Championship team because they have best player in the world on their roster. They have everything it takes to a win a chip and they will win once again this year. Jokic.

[turnaroundJ]

the joker is averaging 31 14 10 48 against the hawks

there's literally nothing more he can do. this FO sucks.

[BigGargamel]

Pretty sure the Nuggets are just moody at the moment figuring things out. They have the best player in the world on their team. Its early in the season. This is a Championship team because they have best player in the world on their roster. They have everything it takes to a win a chip and they will win once again this year. Jokic.

Leave it to a long time lurker to have a rare rational, non knee-jerk thought in a thread full of overreaching hot takes.

This core has several 50 win seasons on their resume. They've started slow before. If it's February and they're still hovering around .500 then the sky can fall. This whole "Jokic needs to demand a trade" thing is just classic RealGM overreacting to everything. I even saw a "Nuggets fan" yesterday say he wants Denver to trade Jokic. WTF.

I remember all of these threads 12 months ago when they started 13-9. Then they went on to win 57 games. It's a long season, sometimes a team needs a kick in the ass, and perhaps that Wizards loss was the kick they needed. For as terrible as this team has looked all year, they're still over .500 and only a couple games out of the 5th seed. With..ya know..ONLY 60 games left to go.

They do need to work on their depth, and Murray needs to find his game, but it's not as doom and gloom as everyone always makes it seem. Denver's goal is to develop a few young guys for the time the playoffs come, and to avoid the play in. A top four seed probably won't happen, but top six is where they need to end up.

This slow start, and that Washington loss, hopefully has given the front office a bit of a sense of urgency and the realization that they need to stop sitting on their hands and find a way to add a backup big man and one more shooter.

[MarcusBrody]

I'm curious if Russ's success and apparent happiness in Denver might help tempt some more ring chasers/betting on themselves guys to Denver on cheap contracts. It's always. Even interesting to me that they've never really been able to attract them. You would think guys would look at the Bruce Brown/KCP contracts and think that playing with Joker could get them paid/return them to relevance.

[FarBeyondDriven]

they made their bed so to speak with the Murray signing. They're stuck. The only way to salvage things would be to move MPJ and AG for young players and picks and hope Holmes is a starting 4 once he's back healthy. Hitting on draft picks will be imperative. But making these moves would require them to give up on the season and being in the tax, losing playoff revenue would hurt the owner's wallets. So it's not happening until the offseason but it should happen now if they had sense.

[garrick]

Zeke naji has the 5TH highest salary on the team and he doesn’t play. This is vastly on Calvin booth. His mentality completely screwed this situation and he put this team in a corner where it’s hard to make moves. It all starts with him because he gave Jamal the extension. Where is the bench??? Where is the backup Center Jokic has never had??? Where is the 3 point shooting?? This is all on him.

Jamal gets the next blame because he is the number 2 guy and has completely regressed. What happened to him? Forget the contract he’s not playing at an even regular season level. And he’s already had arrogance issues. He’s never been a great number 2 and a couple years in the playoffs he managed to pull off looking like Kobe doesn’t speak for who he’s been overall in his career.

The bench is next, but that goes back to Calvin Booth. Malone should be after that for his weak development and getting carried massively by Jokic that he gets little criticism. How is your team barely shooting threes in this era? I don’t like how teams shoot this volume, but it is what it is and this team playing like a team from 15-20 years ago on three point volume ain’t going to cut it.

Agree, fire the GM.

The Suns had the same with JJ who after the finals run just mismanaged the draft and did not sign the necessary players to build on after the championship series in 2021.

Instead JJ screwed up by not drafting Hali, didn't try to make any trades for decent point guards nor big men which was compounded by the brain dead swing for the fences move to gut the core of the team for an aging KD so we are severely undersized and had to overpay for Grayson Allen and Royce O'Neal due to not being able to sign free agents to anything above the vet min.

Some of these GM's are just content to mail it in after a successful season and get complacent.

[Effigy]

Jokic needs to be traded for Milwaukee or Giannis and Dame need to come to Denver-

Honestly I have never seen two franchises mismanage the rosters of top 20 to potentially top 5 players this bad ever.

Their GMs should be fired immediately- while Dallas, OKC, Gouston, Boston, minny and the 76ers are making moves to give their best players a chance - the bucks and nuggets are trying to see how difficult they can make it for their star

You weren’t around for Lebrons first stint in Cleveland I guess. Now THAT was something!

[mkot]

Ball was popping today in Atlanta without Murray.

They looked horrible against the Wizards without him tho (also AG), you can't pick and choose. They played hard tonight, they responded to Jokić and they look good again.

[DCasey91]

It's a bad and wrong attitude to take to say well we have a Joker.... We'll be fine

We've seen this happen before, Bron 3 times over and Giannis doesn't matter about the surroundings huhduhduh we have best player in comp. No

Yes it was a damned if you do situation for the large contracts for the Nuggets but you can't tell me having 5 years to sort out the bench and it still looks worst in comp is anywhere near relative expectation.

OKC just bypassed it and said we are not playing around

My concern is that does Strawthar and PWat have enough time to get it were it needs to be before the playoffs? who knows. What I do know is that it's such a lack of accountability at the top.

[Chuck Everett]

OKC just bypassed it and said we are not playing around

My concern is that does Strawthar and PWat have enough time to get it were it needs to be before the playoffs? who knows. What I do know is that it's such a lack of accountability at the top.

Man, Mark Daigneault is playing second round rookies real minutes in Ajay Mitchell. He's even given minutes to exhibit-A guys (like Malevy Leons) and not reluctantly if he sees some stagnation. Why is it he can instill confidence in young guys who don't really know what the NBA game is about yet and Malone can't? Do you think if Ajay Mitchell were on the Nuggets, Malone would be giving him any burn?

Mitchell is still on a two-way contract by the way. Trey Alexander was a better player coming out of Creighton and he can barely see the court. There is a problem with the coaching here.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I think their issue are maybe internal and in terms of vision.
They have enough talent to contend, and they are showing it, actually.
They are just wildly inconsistent, they can lose or win against anybody. As Jokic said.
To me this must be addressed by the two most powerful people in the organization: Nikola Jokic and Josh (unless Stan want's to step in) Kroenke.
Stop the BS. Stop the coach vs GM feud. Everybody must be held accountable. We have one vision, one strategy, we go for it.
Whoever is not aligned is out (or glued to the bench).

[Ryoga Hibiki]

People keep dissing Porter Jr, but he's been their second best player and has not missed a single game (unlike Jokic, Gordon and Murray). Malone sat two starters against the Wizards, while also not building any confidence in his bench. When is the coach going to get blame for sucking? Every other coach gets smoke, but this guy somehow escapes it. Jay Huff is averaging nearly 10ppg off the bench for Memphis this season and the guy wouldn't play him last year.

I'm not going to lie, I rarely look at Malone when I think about the Nuggets issues and that's because I believe Murray or the GM (for giving Murray his contract) the biggest pieces of the blame pie.

That being said, now that you point it out, I think this is a fair criticism.

that's a team decision, ultimately on ownership.
zero chances Malone was not on board on that, that he preferred to enter the season with this issue unresolved.