The last two offseasons haven’t gone exactly as planned for the team. Denver NuggetsSince winning the 2023 NBA championship, the Nuggets have lost two crucial players from that championship team, with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown (rightfully so) having followed the money after their successful stints in the Mile High City. But any team with Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray as its two stars will continue to thriveand the 2024-25 Nuggets are expected to once again be among the best teams in the association.
Jokic and Murray are still there to function as the heart of the Nuggets’ offense. Their two-man game remains one of the toughest to stop in the NBA, and with Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. still around, they still have the size, athleticism and shooting (at least more consistently from Porter) at the forward positions. But among the league’s true title contenders, the Nuggets may have the most glaring question mark in the rotation. their shooting guard situation.
With Caldwell-Pope gone, it’s unclear who the Nuggets will start. The frontrunner is Christian Braun, an athletic guard who has a knack for being in the right place at the right time, much like Brown before him. Braun, however, is in a different category as a shooter than Caldwell-Pope.
Braun may have fired 38.4 percent out of three Last year, he shot 2.0 in the regular season, but only 2.0 per night. His percentage dropped precipitously in the playoffs, hitting just 22.2 percent of his three-point attempts as the Nuggets were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.
Three-point shooting was already a huge question mark for the Nuggets heading into the 24-25 campaign. They were already the team with the fewest three-pointers in the conference last season, and now their floor spacing situation has gotten worse. It will be interesting to see if Denver will drop off in the upcoming season, or if their zigzagging against a zigzagging NBA will help them reclaim their spot at the top of the NBA.
Nuggets face Northwest Division
The Northwest Division may not be the deepest in the NBA. It’s home to two of the worst teams in the Western Conference, the Utah Jazz and Portland Trail Blazers, which should give the Nuggets at least eight relatively easy games to play in the race for first place.
However, belonging to the same division The two most prominent teams in the West are the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Thunder, in particular, appear to be the favorite to win the 2025 NBA championship. They have one of the best stars in the league in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, two true co-stars in Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams, and a cast of elite role players like Alex Caruso, Isaiah Hartenstein, Luguentz Dort, Cason Wallace, and Isaiah Joe.
Meanwhile, the Timberwolves are still well-equipped to make life extremely difficult for the Nuggets. The size of the Timberwolves’ front line combined with their perimeter defense was an obvious recipe for success last year, and they returned most of their rotation from last season.
The Nuggets’ combined eight games against the Thunder and Timberwolves will be very tough and could end up being the deciding factor in which team wins the division, and maybe even the conference, at the end of the day.
Key dates against difficult opponents
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The Nuggets will open the season on October 25 with a highly anticipated matchup against the Thunder. Their first rematch against the Timberwolves, the team that eliminated them from the 2024 NBA Playoffs, will take place on November 2. They will then face the reigning Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks on November 11. The first month of the season is filled with tough matchups, which may not be ideal given the amount of changes the Nuggets have made to their roster.
On January 8, the Nuggets will face the defending champion Boston Celtics for the first time this season. They also have a tight game on March 10-11 against the Thunder, on the road, which will have major implications for the playoff race.
And then on April 3, the Nuggets will face the San Antonio Spurs for the third and final time. This game is remarkable since it was their season-ending loss to the Spurs last season that relegated them to second place, setting them up for a second-round clash with the Timberwolves that would end their hopes of repeating the championship.
Ultimately, the integration of a new player in the starting five with Christian Braun, the absence of high-level shooters outside of Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr. and Julian Strawther, as well as the random element brought by Russell Westbrook, would make the regular season difficult for the Nuggets to navigate. But by the end of the second half of the season, they would have figured things out and the momentum should be on their side heading into the playoffs.
