Denver Nuggets’ perfect move in 2025 NBA offseason

The Nuggets’ cap situation around Nikola Jokic wasn’t the most ideal. They had ponied up big bucks to keep their core of Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, and Michael Porter Jr., and it made the team very top-heavy. Any deal they could have made to upgrade the team required giving up one of those three.

Considering how Murray is a proven postseason performer and Gordon is at the top of his game after an incredible 2025 playoff run that had him make one clutch shot after another, there was no way the Nuggets were going to trade either of those two. That made Porter the obvious trade candidate.

Porter has two more years left on his deal, and he’s set to make a total of around $79.1 million during that span ($38.3 this season, $40.8 mullion the next). With every million mattering on the cap sheet of a team with title aspirations, the Nuggets needed to strike gold in any trade involving Porter — and they did.

The biggest win of their offseason arguably was managing to trade away Porter and his gigantic contract for Cam Johnson, a sharpshooter who’s in the same league as MPJ as an outside marksman. And all it cost the Nuggets was a 2032 first-round pick for their troubles.

While a 2032 first-round pick could be very valuable, that is seven years out in the future. Jokic would be 37 years old by then, and while it’s difficult to make any concrete projections that far into the future, one would think that he’d no longer be one of the best players in the league by then.

Even then, there is too much uncertainty in that pick for the Nuggets to keep it instead of freeing up over $17 million in cap room while bringing in a comparable player, who, in some respects, is better than Porter.

Johnson is a significantly worse rebounder than Porter, and there seems to be more injury risk in the former. However, Johnson is a much more willing passer and is quicker to make decisions with the ball than Porter. The Nuggets didn’t even downgrade on the shooting department, as Johnson is also capable of hitting bonkers threes on the move like Porter.

There’s also the Jokic factor that must be taken into consideration when projecting Johnson and his impact for the Nuggets moving forward. Johnson averaged 18.8 points last season on 48/39/89 shooting splits despite being the main man for a Brooklyn Nets team that had significantly worse talent than the Nuggets did. Imagine just how much Johnson would feast with Jokic setting him up and with much more space to operate considering that he’s no longer the focal point of the offense.

In short, the Nuggets acquired arguably the better player and freed up cap room, all for the price of a first-round pick seven years from now. With Jokic being at the height of his powers, the Nuggets had to make a move to maximize their odds of winning another title, and this only served to free up the space for Denver to make even more moves to fortify their biggest weakness last season.

Denver pulled off some sorcery with Jonas Valanciunas deal

The Nuggets’ resources were already depleted enough as it is. And then last offseason, they compounded matters by signing Dario Saric to the taxpayer midlevel exception.

Saric ended up struggling for much of the 2024-25 season and found himself out of the rotation for a good portion of the campaign. It’s not promising when a team that lacks depth decides that it’s best for a player not to play whatsoever. Even DeAndre Jordan, who’s 36 years of age and is no longer the force he once was, was getting more minutes than Saric.

But then the Nuggets somehow found a taker for Saric in the Sacramento Kings and got an upgrade at the same time in Jonas Valanciunas without having to give up any sort of draft compensation.

Now that is sorcery. Valanciunas, even in a bench role backing up Domantas Sabonis, put up 8.7 points and 7.0 rebounds in 16.9 minutes a night. He remains a bruising interior presence who can score in the paint, and he’s a forceful presence on the glass still.

Valanciunas immediately becomes the Nuggets’ best Jokic backup since 2020, when they still had Mason Plumlee. Now, Valanciunas is still undecided on whether or not he’d be staying with the team. It makes financial sense for him to stay at the very least. But getting Saric’s contract off the books was a major win in and of itself, and it’d be a magic spell if they manage to keep Valanciunas in the process as well.

A familiar face returns

Bruce Brown was one of the most highly-sought after players on the open market in 2023. He was an essential role player for the Nuggets in their run to the title in 2023, and he received a huge bag in the process — signing a two-year, $45 million contract with the Indiana Pacers.

Since then, however, Brown has faded out of the spotlight. He was traded to the Toronto Raptors in the Pascal Siakam deal, and then he was sent to the New Orleans Pelicans in the Brandon Ingram trade. He’s been stuck in suboptimal situations over the past two seasons.

But now, Brown is returning home to the Nuggets as a crucial bench piece. In addition to being a fan favorite, Brown knows how to play in a Jokic-centric system, making him a valuable piece for Denver in their title push for 2026.