Denver Nuggets 2025-26: Can Nikola Jokić’s Reinforced Squad Finally Conquer the Finals?

The NBA’s new season is finally tipping off, and with it comes a fresh wave of anticipation, speculation, and, of course, those all-important previews that dissect every nook and cranny of the league. We’re diving headfirst into what’s shaping up to be a rollercoaster 2025-26 campaign, peeling back the layers on each of the 30 teams—from the rebuilding squads still finding their footing to those powerhouses gunning for the crown. Last season saw the Nuggets clinch a solid 50-32 record, but the sting of a second-round exit lingers. Now, with several key roster moves that added versatility and experience while waving goodbye to some familiar faces, Denver enters the fray with renewed optimism. At the center of it all stands Nikola Jokić, arguably the planet’s preeminent basketball maestro, poised to chase history as he vies for an unprecedented fourth MVP trophy. But here’s the rub—does he have the cavalry this time to march all the way back to the Finals? Journey with me as we unpack the offseason shakeups, forecast the highs and lows, and size up what kind of thunder the Nuggets and the rest of this wild league might bring this year. Because, trust me, with Jokić in the mix, the unexpected is just around the corner… LEARN MORE

The 2025-26 NBA season is here! We’re rolling out our previews — examining the biggest questions, best- and worst-case scenarios, and win projections for all 30 franchises — from the still-rebuilding teams to the true title contenders.

2024-25 finish

Record: 50-32 (fourth in the West, lost to the Thunder in the second round)

Offseason moves

Additions: Cameron Johnson, Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jonas Valančiūnas, Curtis Jones, Tamar Bates
Subtractions: Michael Porter Jr., Russell Westbrook, DeAndre Jordan, Dario Šarić, Vlatko Čančar

Nikola Jokić and the Nuggets enter the season with the second-best title odds. (Stefan Milic/Yahoo Sports Illustration)

The Big Question: Does Nikola Jokić now have the horses to get back to the Finals?

See what I did there?

Jokić enters his 11th NBA season broadly, if not universally, acclaimed as the best player on the planet. He is, in the eyes of bookmakers and NBA decision-makers alike, neck-and-neck with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander atop the list of favorites for the 2025-26 NBA Most Valuable Player award … which, if he were to win, would make Jokić just the sixth player ever with four MVP trophies, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and LeBron James.

The big fella has led the Nuggets to 50-plus wins — or, in two COVID-shortened campaigns, a 50-plus-win pace — in six of the last seven seasons. (The one shortfall: 2021-22, when injuries limited Michael Porter Jr. to just nine games and kept Jamal Murray off the court entirely … and Jokić broke Wilt’s all-time record for Player Efficiency Rating, averaged a then-career-high 27.1 points per game, carried Denver to 48 wins and a playoff berth, and won MVP.) That includes last season, when — in a somewhat chaotic campaign that saw both head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth get fired just three games before the playoffs — Jokić averaged a triple-double en route to pushing the Nuggets to 50 wins and the No. 4 seed; averaged a triple-double to push the Nuggets past the Clippers in a seven-game Round 1 classic; and averaged 28-14-6 to push the Thunder to seven games in Round 2 despite, by series’ end, Porter Jr. playing with one arm, Aaron Gordon playing on one leg, and Denver’s bench essentially consisting of Russ and prayers (and, sometimes, prayers for Russ).

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Jokić’s presence all but guarantees the Nuggets’ floor: 50ish wins, a top-five offense, a top-five to top-10 net rating, and at worst a puncher’s chance against any opponent they draw in the playoffs. Denver’s ceiling, though, is often determined by his supporting cast. When his teammates — especially playmaking partner Murray and two-way Jack-of-all-trades Gordon — are healthy and humming, the Nuggets can beat anybody. When the help isn’t there, though — especially when Jokić takes a breather — neither are the results.

As Tom Haberstroh noted earlier this month on The Big Number, over the last three postseasons, the Nuggets have been outscored by 96 points in 389 minutes with Jokić on the bench — an average of 8.1 points per 100 possessions, and an 11.8-per-100 swing from when he’s been on the court. As confident as he is about lineups featuring Jokić, Murray, Gordon and rising young wing Christian Braun, head coach David Adelman knows that has to change if Denver hopes to get back to competing for titles.

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“I’m not worried about how the starters are going to flow together. It’s just trying to find the right group with that second unit,” Adelman said at Nuggets media day. “[…] We can’t be minus-12 every night in those [non-Jokić] minutes. It’s just a killer. And we rarely blew people out because of that. And when you do that, you run your guys into the ground, and then the playoffs come, and you’re back playing guys 40 minutes a game, and that just can’t be the case.”

The new Denver front-office combo of Ben Tenzer and Jon Wallace sought to address that issue over the summer. Out went MPJ (and, crucially, an unprotected 2032 first-round pick) in exchange for Cam Johnson — a deal that saved the Nuggets more than $35 million over the next two seasons, while returning a plus shooter (39% from 3-point land on 7.2 attempts per game) who could bring more off-the-ball activity, off-the-bounce dynamism and defensive acumen than Porter did. (Fun fact: Going by Taylor Snarr’s estimated plus-minus numbers at Dunks and Threes, Johnson — who finished at +2.4 — ranked better than any single non-Jokić Nugget last season.)

(Mallory Bielecki/Yahoo Sports Illustration)

The Nuggets then promptly turned the Cam-for-MPJ savings into immediate help. They signed 2023 title winner/franchise favorite Bruce Brown and veteran scoring swingman Tim Hardaway Jr., adding depth, shooting, secondary playmaking and experience on the wing. They also flipped the little-used Dario Šarić for Jonas Valančiūnas — a bruising, experienced, dependable and productive backup center through whom Adelman can run offense when Jokić is off the floor … and that he can maybe, sometimes, just for fun, play alongside Jokić in twin-towers lineups against some of the other giganto-ball squads the Nuggets might have to knock off in the course of running the Western gauntlet.

It’ll be up to Adelman to tinker, mix, match and find the right lineups to not only keep the second units from hemorrhaging points, but maybe even extend the lead on some nights. (Dare to dream!) He looks to have plenty of options, though, between the incoming vets, rising youngsters Julian Strawther and Peyton Watson, and returning 2024 first-round pick DaRon Holmes, who missed all of what would’ve been his rookie season following a ruptured Achilles tendon.

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Questions remain: about Murray’s health, fitness and continued viability as Denver’s No. 2 option; about how smoothly Johnson will slide into MPJ’s starting small forward slot; about the backup point guard spot behind Murray (can Brown and Jalen Pickett effectively split the duties?); about whether personnel and schematic changes can generate more 3-pointers from an offense that’s ranked dead last in the share of its shots that come from beyond the arc in consecutive seasons; and, perhaps most importantly, about whether Adelman can turn this collection of players into something better than last season’s bottom-10 defense. (Swapping MPJ and Westbrook for Johnson and Brown could help there.)

If those questions wind up having mostly affirmative answers, then the Nuggets should once again find themselves in the running for home-court advantage in the first round of the Western playoffs, feeling like they’ve got the best player in every series they enter — and, this time, a posse to go with him. That’s the sort of combination that gives you a chance to win the whole thing — even with a juggernaut like Oklahoma City standing astride the conference.

“They are definitely the hunted one and they’re playing good,” Jokić recently told reporters. “Hopefully we can be the — how do you say it? The silent knight? Silent horse? Dark horse.”

See what he did there?

Best-case scenario

Jokić remains the class of the NBA, winning that historic fourth MVP. Murray plays a full healthy season at the level we’ve seen him reach for stretches, finally earning that long-awaited first All-Star berth. Adelman plays the right notes in the second unit, turning what’s long been a glaring weakness into a defined strength. The Nuggets form like Voltron into an absolute war machine, turning in the NBA’s No. 1 offense, winning 60 games, snatching the No. 1 seed away from the Thunder, and storming to a second NBA championship.

If everything falls apart

Turns out JV, THJ and Brown aren’t, like, league-shaking additions. Denver’s still good in the regular season, but the same bugaboos persist: Murray starts slow and misses time, the non-Braun young guys don’t pop, and the team still largely bleeds points whenever Jokić sits. The Nuggets struggle to rise above the din in the loud and crowded West, failing to get out of the second round yet again, with all the moves they’ve made ostensibly tantamount to just rearranging deck chairs; the front office starts to think seriously about whether bigger moves are required, and what kind of market they might find for Murray or Gordon.

More NBA news

LeBron James reportedly targeting midNovember debut after missing Lakers opener due to sciatica

2025-26 schedule

Season opener: Oct. 23 at Golden State

I’m not entirely sure that Valančiūnas + Brown + Hardaway = four more wins. Then again, through Jokić, all things are possible, right? Screw it: Let’s go over.