This post was originally published on this site.
Before you make your Nuggets wish list this holiday season, consider the risk.
Free agents who signed during the 2025 offseason became eligible to be traded Dec. 15, marking the unofficial start of the NBA’s mid-season transaction period. Front offices will spend the next six weeks assessing their rosters and going shopping, as contenders and tankers alike are on the clock to complete their business before the Feb. 5 trade deadline.
The Nuggets remain firmly established among the league’s elite, but they still could improve by bolstering one or two positions: point-of-attack perimeter defense, secondary ball-handling to help Jamal Murray, or forward depth to navigate potential Aaron Gordon injuries.
Alas, it’s not so simple. Most of the big changes that fans clamor for at this time of year have already happened for the Nuggets. New co-general managers Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer gave the bench a summer makeover.
Any conversation now about hypothetical trades must start by taking stock of the assets remaining at Denver’s disposal.
That list is not long.
The Nuggets have one future second-round pick available to offer and a couple of pick swaps. None of their first-round picks — the ones that still belong to them — are trade-eligible outright. They used their only available first-rounder back in July, attaching a 2032 pick to Michael Porter Jr.’s contract to turn him into Cam Johnson’s friendlier $22 million cap hit. That also enabled the subsequent acquisition of Jonas Valanciunas. It’s been an asset well-used.
Without adequate draft capital, negotiating with trade deadline sellers is exponentially more difficult; they’re focused on stockpiling for the future, not the present. It also means the Nuggets can only hope to get real value out of a trade by offering players.
This is where it gets risky. Unlike yesteryear, when they were dealing with Porter’s albatross of a contract, they don’t have anyone on the roster who’s both sensible to discard and capable of netting a worthwhile return.
You can go down the list.
Nikola Jokic, Murray and Gordon? Borderline untouchable franchise leaders who are each playing some of the best individual and team basketball of their careers this season.
There might be an argument for trading Gordon based on his trend of soft-tissue injuries as he enters his 30s. But that would neglect both his sentimental value to Jokic in the locker room and his irreplaceable versatility on the court.
He’s all of the things Denver would hypothetically need, in one player. He can handle the ball and initiate offense. He can play lockdown defense against opposing stars. He can operate as a small-ball backup center in emergency situations. He can function in Denver’s split game as part of the action, in the dunker spot or out at the 3-point line as a shooter.
Christian Braun? He’s poison-pilled, making him especially difficult to trade even if Denver wanted to. Yes, that’s real NBA terminology. Players who sign an extension before the last year of their rookie contract have weird salary-matching rules, designed to give them some security with their incumbent team.
Braun’s current, rookie-scale salary ($4.9 million) would count as the outgoing money in a trade for Denver, while the incoming money for Team B would be calculated as an average of his current salary and his total extension pay, divided across the duration of the two contracts. It’s all very convoluted, but in Braun’s case, that comes out to about $21.7 million.
Put simply, the poison-pill provision makes it almost impossible for the Nuggets to find a trade partner and even harder to get a player of similar value back for him. He’s not going anywhere.
Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Jr.? Productive and respected players on cost-effective veteran minimum contracts. Trading them gets Denver nowhere. Valanciunas? He’s only Jokic’s best backup center of the last half-decade, or maybe of his whole career.
That leaves Cam Johnson and Peyton Watson as the last options in the nine-man rotation. These two are at least more nuanced situations than the other seven.
Watson and the Nuggets did not agree to a contract extension before the season, which would’ve tagged him with the same poison-pill provision as Braun. Instead, he’s now performing well in a contract year, and league sources believe it’s increasingly unlikely that he’ll be in Denver’s price range next summer when he’s a restricted free agent.
So, is there a case for trading Watson now to get something back for him, instead of potentially losing him for nothing? Maybe, but doing that would also be counterproductive to the primary mission of winning a championship this season. His defensive ability represents the type of skillset Denver should be trying to add in a trade, not give up.
As for Johnson, the starting small forward has turned a corner, but even his slow start wasn’t enough to hinder the success of Denver’s starting lineup. He’s a 39% outside shooter who spaces the floor effectively, plays with a high IQ and brings an easygoing, low-maintenance personality.
If the Nuggets wanted to play around in the sandbox with bigger salaries, they could try to flip Johnson and a second-round pick for a minor upgrade, or exchange him for a different type of player, a more defense-oriented wing.
That sort of transaction ventures into hazardous territory, though. Why even risk messing up a good thing? Johnson is unique in that he’s been able to contribute to winning despite any individual struggles. The last thing Denver should want is to make a trade just for the sake of making a trade.
Finances could be a factor this trade season. The Nuggets are about $400,000 over the luxury tax threshold, and the Kroenke family might feel inclined to make a small cost-cutting move to finish the season out of the tax. Their ideal candidate for this would be Zeke Nnaji, who Denver tried to trade at the 2024 deadline but failed to do so because his contract is so poorly regarded around the league. He’s getting paid $8.2 million this season and remains under contract until 2028.
Other possible tax-based moves could involve Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett or Hunter Tyson.
Complicating matters is that Denver can’t trade away a player just to shed salary without subsequently adding a player. Teams aren’t allowed to leave two roster spots vacant. The Nuggets have already been carrying only 14 players on the 15-man roster, with two-way wing Spencer Jones building an impressive case to fill the last spot. One of the key questions for the front office in the coming weeks: Is there an outcome that involves giving Jones a standard contract while also shaving enough payroll to get under the tax?
The red-flag move would be to shed Watson’s $4.4 million cap hit and not get a rotation-caliber player back. That would read as an admission from ownership that Denver doesn’t believe it can compete with the Oklahoma City Thunder this year, despite an exceptional start to the season.
A maneuver like that wouldn’t track with the organization’s messaging since summer. After taking OKC to the brink of elimination with a weaker team — not to mention a hobbled one — the Nuggets felt like they executed the offseason exactly as needed to level the playing field between themselves and the defending NBA champs.
The fireworks show was in July. Further splashy moves don’t seem likely at this trade deadline, and they wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing either.
What Denver does on the margins will be more fascinating.
Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.