DENVER — Even as they sat in champagne-drenched uniforms with spray-blocking ski goggles on their heads, the Nuggets couldn’t help but talk about returning to the NBA Finals stage again.
“Well, we’re going to enjoy tonight, of course,” Aaron Gordon said. “This is a night to be celebrated…"
“A few weeks. Not just tonight,” Bruce Brown cut him off. “We’re going to enjoy this for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks to be celebrated,” Gordon concurred. “But I believe that it can be replicated. The guys on this team are very humble. The humility is there, the IQ is there and these guys are workers.”
More importantly, most of the core of this championship Denver Nuggets roster is young and locked down for a few years, a master stroke of roster construction. We might want to get used to seeing the Nuggets on this Finals stage.
Finals MVP Nikola Jokić is 28. Jamal Murray is 26. Of the Nuggets starters in Game 5, every one will be back. Jokić is about to start his new five-year max extension next summer, Michael Porter Jr. has four years left on his deal, Jamal Murray and Gordon each have two years left, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is locked in next season with a player option for the season after that.
“It’s not the starting unit. It’s the whole team,” Jokić said. “Since day one in San Diego, it was something different about this team. I felt it. I felt some different energy and every day since then I had the same feeling. I’m not really optimistic guy, but that gave me hope that we can do something.”
The Nuggets did something going 16-4 to steamroll through the West and then the Heat in the NBA Finals. They are going to basically run it back. Who in the West is going to keep them out of the Finals? No. 2 seed Memphis has to deal with the coming Ja Morant punishment and find their maturity. The No. 3 seed Kings have to figure out how to defend. No. 4 seed Phoenix may be the most dangerous — Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and company did force the Nuggets to a Game 6 — but they have a new coach and a need to add depth around those stars. The Lakers made the Western Conference Finals but get a year older, including LeBron James turning 39 before the next postseason. The Warriors are a threat but a year older as well. Teams like the Timberwolves or Pelicans still have giant leaps to make, and the list just goes on and on.
The West has good teams, but the Nuggets are now the bar to clear.
Denver does have decisions to make this season. Bruce Brown — he of the game-sealing shot in Game 5 — is widely expected to opt out of his $6.8 million next season. And he should. Brown has made a little more than $15 million in his five NBA seasons, he could make that or more next season alone (the floor for him is the mid-level exception of $12.2 million). Then there is Jeff Green, an unrestricted free agent who helped his stock.
The challenge for GM Calvin Booth and the Denver front office is the roster as constructed, with 10 players fully guaranteed next season, is way over the salary cap and $7 million into the luxury tax, leaving them just a little less than $10 million from the second tax apron line that the Nuggets will not want to cross (it dramatically limits team building options).
Denver does have its taxpayer mid-level exception of $5 million and the bi-annual exception to use this summer, but they need to figure out how to add about six players to the roster and stay under the second tax apron.
Which is exactly what Denver’s recent trade with Oklahoma City was about. The Nuggets are trading their 2029 first-round pick (protected) to the Thunder for the No. 37 pick in this June’s NBA Draft and the worst of the Thunder’s 2024 first-round picks. For Denver, this trades a far-away future first-rounder for picks that can help them now — Denver could land players at the top of the second round (they now have No. 37 and 40 this June), plus a couple of late first-rounders next year to bring in players on very affordable rookie scale contracts. The hope is to find another Christian Braun (who helped in the Finals and is locked into his rookie contract for at least three more seasons).
The names will shift a little on the edges, but the Nuggets are well-positioned to ensure this trip to the Finals is not a one-time thing.
“Pat Riley said something many years ago,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “I used to have it up on my board when I was a head coach in Sacramento, and it talked about the evolution in this game and how you go from a nobody to an upstart, and you go from an upstart to a winner and a winner to a contender and a contender to a champion, and the last step is after a champion is to be a dynasty.
“So we’re not satisfied. We accomplished something this franchise has never done before, but we have a lot of young talented players in that locker room, and I think we just showed through 16 playoff wins what we’re capable of on the biggest stage in the world.”
A stage they plan to return to.
