The Denver Nuggets have a Nikola Jokic problem. Not the bad kind. The kind where your three-time MVP might sit on a potential contract extension until next offseason, and nobody in the front office can blame him for it.
Jokic is eligible to sign a supermax extension worth roughly $217 million over four years this summer. But according to Sam Amick of The Athletic, league and team sources say the big man hasn’t tipped his hand on whether he’ll actually put pen to paper. The Nuggets, per those same sources, don’t have clarity on how Jokic plans to handle it. That alone would send most fan bases into a spiral. But Denver’s front office is apparently treating this as business as usual — because they’re pretty sure Jokic means it when he says he wants to be a Nugget forever.
In the meantime, co-heads of basketball operations Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer are focused on something more immediate: finding another primary ballhandler to take pressure off Jokic and Jamal Murray.
The search for a creator
Amick reported that league sources describe Denver as actively hunting for a creative guard who can handle the rock and generate shots for others. The Nuggets learned the hard way this spring that when Murray gets bottled up or Jokic gets doubled, there’s not enough secondary creation on the roster. Minnesota exposed that in the first round, bouncing Denver in five games.
One name that keeps floating around is Boston’s Jaylen Brown. But Brown isn’t really a point guard. He’s a scorer who can make plays in a pinch. That might not be the pure facilitator Denver needs. Still, the Nuggets are reportedly linked to him, which suggests they’re thinking big.
Meanwhile, Jokic averaged 27.7 points, 12.9 rebounds and 10.7 assists this season — his second straight triple-double campaign. He turned 31 in February. He’s still the best player on the floor most nights. But after the playoff exit, he told reporters the Nuggets were “far away” from contending again. That’s a statement that gets your attention.
No panic in the front office
Despite the uncertainty around the extension, team sources insist the relationship is solid. Amick wrote that the Nuggets remain confident Jokic’s stated plan from late April — where he said he wants to be a Nugget forever — still holds true. The front office has no reason to doubt him. Jokic isn’t the type to leak leverage plays through back channels. He’d just tell them directly.
But the clock is ticking. If Jokic doesn’t sign this offseason, he’ll hit free agency in 2026. That’s two years from now. In NBA terms, that’s basically tomorrow. Denver has a narrow window to retool around him before the roster gets expensive and inflexible.
The Nuggets aren’t panicking. But they’re definitely working. And the next move they make will tell us a lot about how much trust they actually have in that “forever” promise.
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