The Nuggets are wasting Nikola Jokić's prime, and they're running out of time to fix it

Think about the great roster-building failures around superstars in recent NBA history, the ones that drove stars to force their way to new teams. Damian Lillard spent 11 years in Portland, but at least had one teammate make and All-Star team (LaMarcus Aldridge) and another win Most Improved Player (C.J. McCollum). Anthony Davis got one All-Star season out of DeMarcus Cousins and two All-Defense selections for Jrue Holiday during his New Orleans Pelicans tenure. LeBron James, the absolute poster boy for stars carrying mismanaged organizations during his first tenure with the Cleveland Cavaliers, at least managed to milk a single All-Star season each out of Mo Williams and Zydrunas Illgauskas and an All-Defense year out of Anderson Varejao.

But Nikola Jokić? In a full decade with the Nuggets, not a single teammate of his has ever made an All-Star Game or won an individual trophy. He has never played with an All-NBA player, an All-Defense teammate or for a Coach or Executive of the Year, and both his head coach (Michael Malone) and lead executive (Calvin Booth) just got fired. The only way he has ever seen a teammate honored for their own performance is through an All-Rookie selection. Emmanuel Mudiay, Jamal Murray and Bones Hyland were chosen. Neither made First Team.

Typically, the single easiest way to keep a star happy is to surround him with other stars. The Nuggets have done as poor a job of that as almost any team in recent memory. If we were talking about any other superstar, there would be probably be trade request rumblings by now.

There are a variety of possible reasons we haven't in Jokić's case, but the Nuggets need to remember that none of them are bulletproof. Yes, he's won a championship in Denver. If championships guaranteed eternal harmony, Giannis Antetokounmpo wouldn't drop trade request hints every summer. He seemingly has a pretty low-maintenance personality, but plenty of unassuming stars have gotten antsy. Kawhi Leonard was the Spursiest Spur that ever Spurred. We assumed San Antonio was immune to the player empowerment era until it wasn't. Damian Lillard was the face of NBA loyalty in Portland. He now plays for the Bucks.

The allegiance of almost any Jokić-level player is fickle. It cannot be taken for granted. And even if Jokić pledged to spend the rest of his career in Denver tomorrow, the alternative of wasting that career is just as bad. This is perhaps one of the 10 greatest players in the history of basketball. He plays in a conference that is not only loaded, but young and improving. The Thunder aren't going away. The Spurs are coming. Luka Dončić is building his own contender with the Lakers. Maybe there was a time in which having Jokić, alone, was enough to meaningfully contend for championships. It isn't anymore. He needs an organization capable of helping him.

Even at the best of times, the opposite has been true. Advocates for Denver's front office would point to the job they've done in surround Jokić with players whose skill sets he can maximize. Aaron Gordon, as a middling lottery pick turned seamlessly fitting role player, is a perfect example. Russell Westbrook's renaissance is another. It's just worth wondering how much credit the front office deserves for moves like that when Jokić may simply be a miracle worker. LeBron James couldn't make Westbrook work. That Jokić could suggests that he is uniquely capable of lifting just about any teammate, not that his front office was especially skilled at finding the right ones. He's helping them, not the other way around.

And if that is true, what does it say about the roster Denver has assembled that Jokić hasn't been able to lift it into guaranteed contention? The Nuggets will win between 47 and 50 games this season. They won 48 in 2022, when Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. combined to play nine games. Jokić has been better statistically this season than he was then. The overall supporting cast has just been that much worse.

The problems with Denver's roster

Obviously, the primary culprit here is the bench. The Nuggets are 18.6 points per 100 possessions worse whenever Jokić rests. Just about every measure Booth took try to fix that bench failed. His two mid-level signings since winning the championship were Reggie Jackson, who was later cap-dumped, and Dario Šarić, who does not play. Westbrook is the only minimum-salary veteran who has given them much, and even he is pretty hit or miss. Booth draft picks like Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett and Hunter Tyson have shown little. Peyton Watson hasn't grown on offense. Booth was confident letting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk because he trusted Christian Braun to fill in for him as a starter. He has... but nobody has replaced Braun on the bench. The Zeke Nnaji contract has thus far proven untradable.

But the starters have been far from unimpeachable in their own right, at least as individuals. While the five-man unit of Jokic, Murray, Gordon, Porter and Braun has a +12.2 net rating, according to Cleaning the Glass, that number plummets to -11.3 in the admittedly small 103-possession sample the other four have played without Jokić. The samples remain small on a year-to-year basis, but that's been a relatively consistent trend. Last year's starters posted a -12 net rating without Jokić. During the championship season, it was -7.3. Strip down those lineups even further to just the two centerpieces and things look even grimmer. Not once in Murray's career have Nuggets lineups featuring him without Jokić ever posted a positive net rating over a full season.

This is pretty problematic in the context of his contract. Denver re-signed Murray to a four-year max extension last offseason despite an injury-riddled 2023-24 season and a disastrous Olympic run for Team Canada. He's getting paid like the All-Star he's never been for more than a few months in a few postseasons. 

The same is true for Michael Porter Jr. He also got a five-year max extension off of his rookie deal. Since then, he's averaged 17.2 points per game on 60.6% true shooting. Tobias Harris averaged 17.6 points per game on 57.8% true shooting during his widely panned max contract with the Philadelphia 76ers. The Porter contract hasn't received nearly as much criticism because Jokić's brilliance shielded him from it. Denver won a championship because of Jokić, and bad contracts get ignored so long as they don't impede winning.

Well, now they are. Even if Murray and Porter tend to lead to successful lineups with Jokić, it's hard to imagine either garnering much interest on the trade market at their current prices in large part because other teams would worry about how impactful they'd be without him. The same is almost certainly true for Aaron Gordon. His cutting and athleticism make him an ideal Jokić teammate. He is also about to start a three-year extension worth almost $35 million per year. He will turn 30 this season, has been a poor 3-point shooter for most of his career and has quietly started to dip by most defensive metrics. How valuable is he moving forward if he isn't flanked by the best passer in the NBA?

Why there's not an obvious fix

The Nuggets can't support this core with meaningful free agent additions because it is so expensive that it basically caps them out. They can't make major upgrades by trading draft picks either because they are now down to one tradable first-rounder, which could come, at the earliest, in 2031. 

It's hard to even imagine them making any sort of seismic player-centric swap with another team because every core Nugget holds significantly more value to the Denver than anyone else. Gordon's value is maximized next to Jokić. Porter is essential to Denver because nobody else on the team shoots 3s, but no other team would look at him as a max-salary offensive force. Murray may not be a viable No. 2 offensive option to most contenders, but he is in Denver because Jokić's consistent availability covers up for his injuries and their unique pick-and-roll chemistry isn't replicable with any other big man. As good as these players have been for Denver at times, given their contracts and those unique factors, it's just hard to imagine the Nuggets getting all that much back for any of them.

Perhaps one of the NBA's more creative basketball thinkers could solve these problems, but the Nuggets can't be trusted to hire them. This is an organization that has historically refused to pony up for top front office talent. Mark Warkentien won Executive of the Year in 2009. His contract was not extended in 2010. He was replaced by Masai Ujiri, who also won Executive of the Year in 2013. The Raptors proceeded to outbid the Nuggets for his services. Tim Connelly was hired to replace him, drafted Jokić, built the bones of the 2023 champions, and then got poached by the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's hard to imagine the Nuggets going out and splurging for, say, Bob Myers to come in and fix this. 

What happens to Jokić?

In other words, things are getting dark. They're getting dark in the way that they did for, say, LeBron in his first tenure with the Cavaliers, a way in which we tend to ignore until the situation is beyond repair. Jokić has held this team together with duct tape for the past two years, but with Malone and Booth now gone, those cracks are getting harder and harder to ignore. Given everything we've covered, there's not exactly a clear path to patching them.

Maybe this ends with Jokić finishing his career on another team. It's likelier, and probably sadder in the broader basketball context, that he will ultimately fritter away what's left of his prime on a team that doesn't deserve him. It's something we've never really seen before, at least not among the 10 or 15 players that might be true historical peers of Jokić's. Sure, great players have been on bad teams before, but think of the players we listed above.

Davis and Lillard both eventually moved on, and they aren't in Jokić's historical weight class. As blasphemous as it sounds, James might be. Imagine if LeBron had spent his entire career on a Cleveland team that had never been able to replenish its asset pool after he left for Miami. He probably, eventually, would have won a championship just as Jokić did in 2023. Even with an underwhelming roster, it's just hard to deny players of that caliber and consistency a single championship when they get enough healthy bites at the apple.

But we never would have known the breadth of his greatness. We never would have seen what he was capable of under the best of circumstances, how he could fit with players who were close to his equals and how high he could soar when he wasn't weighed down carrying an entire roster on his back. His legacy would have been about what he might have been instead of what we now know he turned out to be.

It's entirely possible that we're headed there with Jokić, who is currently under contract through the 2026-27 season with a player option for 2027-28. He could very easily become the only three-time MVP never to play with another Hall of Famer in his prime. Not coincidentally, every other three-time MVP aside from Moses Malone has more championships than Jokić does at this stage.

The Nuggets, under Booth especially but to a lesser extent Malone, were not going to change that. This organization has not done right by perhaps the greatest player of his generation. Their replacements are facing an uphill battle to fix that. This is a team devoid of meaningful trade assets. It is bogged down by a number of ill-advised contracts and staring down the most restrictive CBA the NBA has ever devised. And if its own track record is to be believed, it is owned by a group not willing to pay for the best people to solve these problems.

At least by acknowledging the existence of the problem, the Nuggets can begin the process of fixing it. But with Jokić now in his 30s and virtually every roster-building factor working against them moving forward, the clock is ticking. If they don't nail the hires for a new coach and general manager, we are going to look back on this era of Nuggets basketball as one of the most remarkable wastes of greatness in the history of the sport.