Nuggets president: 'Everything's on the table,' except trading Nikola Jokić, after disappointing playoff exit
Denver had high hopes this season, but lost in the first round
The Denver Nuggets saw themselves as championship contenders coming into the season, having added shooting and depth last summer. They certainly did not anticipate that, during the second round of the playoffs, their braintrust would be answering questions about the team's future.
"I thought that, if this group was healthy, that this could be a 60-, 65-win team," team president Josh Kroenke told reporters at a press conference Friday.
The Nuggets were not healthy for much of the season. Aaron Gordon played in just 36 regular-season games, Christian Braun 44 and Peyton Watson and Cameron Johnson 54 apiece. Denver still finished 54-28, good enough for the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference, but then it lost its first-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves in six games.
And while the Nuggets absolutely missed Gordon and Watson in the playoffs, they cannot wave off the loss as a result of poor injury luck. The Timberwolves were even more severely shorthanded -- they clinched the series without Anthony Edwards, Donte DiVincenzo and Ayo Dosunmu.
As a result, the four people who spoke on Friday -- Kroenke, coach David Adelman and executives Ben Tenzer and Jonathan Wallace -- acknowledged that Denver needs to improve in the offseason. It's unclear if the Nuggets will shake up the core of the team again (after trading Michael Porter Jr. last summer), but they are at least open to it.
"I think everything's on the table, outside of trading Nikola," Kroenke said.
In theory, then, Jamal Murray, who is coming off his first All-Star (and likely All-NBA) season, could be traded. So could Gordon. But Kroenke also said repeatedly that "running it back" is a possibility, stressing that the team didn't get to show what it could do when healthy for a sustained period of time.
"I think this season was, in a lot of ways, the season that never was, because this group never fully got a chance to show any kind of rhythm," Kroenke said.
He added that their lack of rhythm "truly showed up when the games mattered in April."
What about Peyton Watson?
The best story of Denver's season was Watson's emergence as a creator. Given that Watson didn't sign an extension before it started, though, the Nuggets are in a tough spot.
Watson is a restricted free agent, so Denver doesn't have to worry about losing him for nothing. If it retains him, though, its payroll could go well past the second apron. Practically speaking, the Nuggets have to cut salary elsewhere if they want to bring Watson back, unless they decide they're comfortable with a large luxury-tax bill (and the roster-building restrictions that come with being above the second apron).
Kroenke did not commit to being a luxury-tax or second-apron team next season, but didn't rule out adding payroll, either.
"Peyton had a great year," Tenzer said. "He obviously grew a lot. I said it at the beginning of the season: We hope Peyton is a Nugget for a very long time. He's been great for us."
Wallace said Watson deserved kudos for "staying the course" and developing the way he did this season.
"What he showed us is what we knew he could do," Wallace said. "So he did his part. So, like Ben said, we hope he's a Nugget for a long time. We gotta continue to hit on these homegrown talents, and he's been the focal point of that."
Where can the Nuggets' roster improve?
Adelman brought up two areas of improvement: ball-handling and one-on-one defense. Let's start with the ball handling.
In both their loss to Minnesota this season and their loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder last season, the Nuggets "had a hard time dealing with pressure," Adelman said. He noted that, late in the Wolves series, simply putting backup guard Tyus Jones into the game to dribble the ball up helped Denver get organized.
Maybe the front office needs to acquire more ball-handlers. Even if the roster stays exactly the same, though, Adelman said the Nuggets will challenge their players to improve in this area. "That's the new NBA," he said. "You're watching all these series, there's so many people bringing the ball up the floor."
He added that it is "paramount" that they improve their handling of ball pressure.
"Everybody has a responsibility to get better at that stuff and fill that hole," Adelman said. "Because the expectation can't just be Aaron's going to play 82, it can't be that Nikola's going to play 82 or Jamal."
Denver has to "adapt to the league 'cause the league has adapted to us," Wallace said. "And that's a testament to how great Nikola's been, how great Jamal's been, coaching staff, over the years. They're going to pressure us, and that's just a constant at this point."
Defensively, Adelman said that the Nuggets did a good job taking away Minnesota's pet actions during the playoffs. It did a poor job, though, of containing the ball, especially late in the shot clock.
"Simplicity is sometimes the answer, and I think you have to sit down and guard one-on-one much better," Adelman said. "If we can do that, it keeps me out of trying to run zones or cross-matches because those things have holes, too. But I do believe for us to improve, to a man, the last seven seconds of the shot clock has gotta be better."
Generally speaking, the message was relatively straightforward: Denver is extremely disappointed by how the season ended, and everybody involved wants to compete for championships. The plan is to come back better, either through internal improvement or roster moves. It's unclear, though, whether those moves will be small tweaks or big swings.
"Going into that series, we hadn't lost in a month," Adelman said. "And so you have to look at that, too. So you want to make sure you look at the positives and don't ignore them so you don't lose the things that you had. But you definitely can add every offseason to try to compete with the best teams in the league."
