Nuggets Predicted to Fall Short of Expected Win Total

The Denver Nuggets made a bundle of noticeable improvements to their rotation heading into the 2025-26 season that gives this championship-aspiring roster some new hope and optimism for the year ahead.

In the starting lineup, Cam Johnson would be brought in as an upgrade on the wing. Down the bench, multiple new contributors were added into the fold, combining to make for a relatively balanced, potent, and deep rotation for the Nuggets to roll out throughout a gruelling regular season, and more importantly, a strong postseason run.

But in the eyes of ESPN, those roster tweaks might not lead to an extreme jump in the Western Conference standings. In fact, they could even fall a bit short of their overall win-loss projection, too.

ESPN's Kevin Pelton broke down some stat-based predictions for how each team's regular season would fare for the 82 games ahead, and whether they would meet, exceed, or fall short of those initial projections.

For the Nuggets, they were pinned with a projected 52.2 wins— good for third in the West, but also short of their 53.5 wins that ESPN BET sees them achieving.

"There's not much disagreement here on the Nuggets, who are third in the Western Conference either way," Pelton wrote. "The win-plus differential could easily be explained by the market's optimism that Denver's newcomers––Cameron Johnson, Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Jonas Valanciunas––will perform slightly better when paired with three-time MVP Nikola Jokic."

The two teams that rose above the Nuggets? To no surprise, the OKC Thunder were atop the list, but number two wound up as the Golden State Warriors with an eye-catching 56.1; nearly 10 wins ahead of where their betting odds stand, but an example of just how these stat-based models can vary from a sportsbook's view.

Still, for the Nuggets, they're projected to rise a couple of wins from their previous outing, as well as leap from the fourth to third seed in the West––showing that while not as explosive of a jump, this Denver roster is better than their previous edition.