Was Game 7 loss the last we'll see of Nuggets' core together?

There’s a chance that Game 7’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder might have been the last game together for the Nuggets‘ core four of Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, and Michael Porter Jr., writes Bennett Durando of the Denver Post. The quartet, which has played together since the trade to acquire Gordon in 2022, is looking at a financial reality that might prove too onerous for ownership to bear, especially with the team struggling to get past the second round since winning the title in 2023.

On the question of whether the team could win a championship as currently constructed, Jokic said, “If we could, we will win it. So I don’t believe in the ‘if, if’ stuff. We had opportunity. We didn’t win it. So I think we can’t.”

The loss comes after the abrupt termination of general manager Calvin Booth and longtime head coach Michael Malone, both of whom were crucial architects of the championship identity, just weeks before the playoffs began. Interim head coach David Adelman ended up coaching nearly as many Game 7s as he did regular-season games.

Murray and Gordon both have extensions about to kick in. Murray’s four-year, nearly $208MM deal, while Gordon’s is a three-year $109MM extension after he exercised his $22.84MM player option in the 2025/’26 season. While both are trade-eligible, they have been crucial pieces of the Nuggets’ success, especially Gordon, who has consistently been a big-shot maker and elite defender while displaying a seamless connection with Jokic as a cutter and screener. That leaves Porter Jr. as the best chance the team has to address some of its roster holes while they still can, especially with Christian Braun‘s extension eligibility looming.

We have more from around the Northwest:

• Whatever decisions the Nuggets are forced to make by finances and a lack of repeated Finals runs will be made more difficult by the bonds that have developed over the years. One such relationship is between Porter and Gordon, who have become close friends and support pillars for each other, Marc J. Spears writes for Andscape. Gordon played this season after losing his older brother, Drew, and Porter was someone he could lean on in times of hardship. Gordon and Porter both fought through injuries that limited them in their series against the Thunder, to the point that Porter wondered if he made things worse by being out there. “I probably should’ve just let it heal for a few games and then try to come back,” he said. “That is just not the person I am.”
• Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch‘s journey to back-to-back conference finals appearances began with a rejection from a Pennsylvania high school coaching gig, writes Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic. At the time, he was coaching basketball in England and desperate for a way home. That journey led him to the Rockets’ G League team, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, which eventually led him to Minnesota, where, for the second time in three seasons, Finch had to figure out how to construct an identity around a team with brand-new star players. The results were tumultuous to start the season, with the team being booed for a lackluster start and discourse about whether newly-acquired star Julius Randle should be benched for Sixth Man of the Year Naz Reid, but Finch eventually found the right buttons to push for to his new-look team. “The validation I feel is for what we’re doing overall as a program,” Finch said.
• The Thunder have some fascinating lineup choices to consider as they go into tonight’s Game 1 series against the Wolves, says SI’s Rylan Stiles. After having defeated Jokic, the team is likely to be less reliant on the two-big minutes between Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein against the athletic Randle and more traditional center in Rudy Gobert. That, in turn, would allow the Thunder to bring more of their defensive-minded guards into the lineup to try their hand at slowing down Anthony Edwards.
• Randle and Gobert struggled to find their footing early on together, but in the second round of the 2025 playoffs, they showcased why they are such dangerous players — while shaking off some negative reputations around their playoff history, writes Mark Medina of Athlon Sports. “You’ve gotten a lot of disrespect your whole career,” Gobert said to  Randle. “And so have I.” Finch, who was an assistant coach in New Orleans for Randle’s breakout year, says that finding the balance of Randle’s responsibilities was key to unlocking the team. “We, at different times of the season,n gave him the message, ‘Hey we need you to score more. Hey, we need you to pass more.’ And sometimes it was the wrong message… So that was a lot of our early season growth with him.“