The Denver Nuggets tried to trade for Luka Doncic on draft night in 2018 and came close to acquiring Jrue Holiday at the 2020 trade deadline, per Mike Singer, formerly of the Denver Post and now the Nuggets' director of intelligence and strategy. In an appearance on ESPN's "The Hoop Collective with Brian Windhorst," Singer discussed the two what-ifs, as the details of both proposed trades appear in his forthcoming biography of Denver's franchise player, "Why So Serious?: The Untold Story of NBA Champion Nikola Jokic."
Could the Nuggets really have paired Jokic with Doncic?
According to Singer, at least one person involved on Denver's side thought so.
"I don't know, I was not in the room, I was not in the front office at the time," Singer said. "All I know is that it was considered, explored, vetted, and I have somebody saying anonymously, 'For 30 seconds, we thought we had Luka.'"
Singer's story is pretty straigtforward: Entering the 2018 NBA Draft, Denver had the No. 14 pick and was high on both Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. It didn't end up getting Gilgeous-Alexander, as the Los Angeles Clippers took him with the No. 11 pick. Doncic was nowhere near the Nuggets' range, but they thought they had a chance to get him because "they knew that [then-Sacramento Kings lead executive] Vlade Divac was not particularly high on Luka Doncic and they tried to exploit it."
Denver "had designs on pairing Nikola Jokic with Luka Doncic," Singer said, so it made a proposal: Gary Harris and two first-round picks for the No. 2 pick.
At the time, Harris was 23 years old and coming off a career year. In retrospect, it would have been one of the most lopsided trades in NBA history, but it also would have been better for the Kings than what they ended up doing with their pick. They selected Marvin Bagley III, who had a rocky, three-and-a-half-year tenure in Sacramento. Doncic wound up with the Dallas Mavericks via their trade with the Atlanta Hawks, and the Nuggets used their pick on Michael Porter Jr.
For years, Divac has denied that he was low on Doncic and maintained that they thought Bagley was a better fit next to point guard De'Aaron Fox. "I like Luka," Divac told Zach Lowe, then of ESPN, in 2019, "but we didn't want to overload with players who -- maybe they don't have the exact same characteristics, but if you want to develop the guys you have, you have to make sure they have room to develop." Two months ago, in an interview with Index, a Croatian outlet, Divac said he might have made the wrong decision, but explained it the same way.
"I could've taken Luka, but then I would've had to trade Fox," Divac told Index, as translated by Dallas Hoops Journal.
Divac said he thought that Fox could develop into a franchise player. Fox made the All-Star team and the All-NBA team in 2023, but has not become a perennial MVP candidate like Doncic.
"Time will tell if I was wrong," Divac said. "As things stand now, it looks like I am, but I have faith in Fox that he will have a better career."
What happened with Holiday?
According to Singer, Denver was "closer than has ever been known" to acquiring Holiday at the 2020 trade deadline.
Holiday was a member of the New Orleans Pelicans at the time. This was before the NBA shut down the 2019-20 season and restarted it at Walt Disney World because of COVID-19. In November 2020, before the 2020-21 season began, the Pelicans traded Holiday to the Milwaukee Bucks.
"The Jrue Holiday trade was very real," Singer said, "and it ultimately would have meant that Aaron Gordon doesn't come to Denver."
Singer said that he's under the impression that the Nuggets were closer to getting Holiday than they were to getting Doncic.
"Somebody told me that if there was a little bit more time ... it would've gotten done," Singer said.
Leading up to that trade deadline, Shams Charania, then of The Athletic, reported that Denver was interested in Holiday, but New Orleans' asking price was high and Holiday didn't want to be traded. Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix reported the same thing days later, adding that the Nuggets had made Harris "very available" and would include guard Malik Beasley in a deal, but wouldn't give up Porter. In the immediate aftermath of the deadline, The Athletic's David Aldridge reported that Denver was "looking for some way to pry" Holiday away from the Pelicans until the end, but could not get a deal done.
The following offseason, before Holiday became a Buck, the Nuggets were again a rumored destination according to multiple outlets. Singer wrote that November that guard Monte Morris could be the swing piece in a potential Holiday deal, and The Athletic's John Hollinger wrote that they'd likely have to give up three first-round picks.
The Pelicans ended up getting two first-round picks and two pick swaps from Milwaukee. Months later, before the 2021 trade deadline, Denver sent Harris, R.J. Hampton and a first-round pick to the Orlando Magic for Gordon.
Holiday played an enormous role in the Bucks winning the 2021 championship, and did the same for the 2024 champion Boston Celtics after Milwaukee let him go in the Damian Lillard deal. Gordon, meanwhile, was a huge part of the Nuggets' 2023 title run. In this context, Denver reportedly being "very close," as Singer put it, to landing Holiday -- and thereby taking themselves out of the mix for Gordon -- in 2020 qualifies as a sliding-doors moment.
