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Last night, April 30, the Denver Nuggets fell 110-98 to what was essentially the Minnesota Timberwolves’ B-squad in game six of first round. Despite the absences of Wolves starters Anthony Edwards and Donte DiVincenzo, plus late scratches for key role players Ayo Dosunmu and Kyle Anderson, the Nugs were on their heels early and came up well short down the stretch.
And because Denver had followed up its victory in the series’ first contest with stinkers in the second, third and fourth games before returning to something close to form in the fifth, Nikola Jokić and his brethren have now begun the off-season well before either they or their loyalists hoped.
As a result, the Nuggets brain-trust has some important decisions to make about the future of the squad, and they should be sweeping. After gagging in each of the three seasons after their initial championship, it’s blindingly obvious that running it back with the same core group is no longer acceptable. Hard choices will have to be made — harder than all of their predecessors combined.
Here’s five tough decisions that should definitely be considered on the morning after.
Sayonara to Jamal Murray
Yeah, yeah, Murray earned his first all-star nod in 2025-2026 thanks to his best statistical season to date. But he was mediocre against the Timberwolves overall and downright vomitous on Thursday night, canning just four of seventeen shots from the field. A big reason for his woeful performance was the rightfully hated Jayden McDaniel, who forced him into unwise heaves on multiple occasions and got so deeply into his head that he clanked plenty of open looks, too. Just as problematically, he failed to adequately defend usual bench-sitter Terrence Shannon Jr., whose scorching speed on drives to the hoop (he wound up with a crushing 24 points) made Jamal look old, slow and weak.
Granted, Murray has never been more than decent on D, but the way Shannon exposed him smacked of a legitimate decline in his skills that aren’t going to be magically improved by an extended summer in Canada. And since his stock in the league generally remains high, the Nuggets can expect to get plenty back from a trade to a desperate wannabe contender.
Telling Murray “Thanks for the memories” before giving him the heave-ho was previously unthinkable. It shouldn’t be any longer.
Ditto Aaron Gordon
This prospect hurts even more than bidding Murray farewell. Gordon , known as “Mr. Nugget” to fans, was the key to Denver snagging the 2023 crown, and his work ethic, personality, idiosyncrasies and combination of defensive want-to and growing offensive prowess are reasons why he became not just a fan favorite, but the fan favorite.
Problem is, he’s been hurt for hefty chunks of the past two seasons, often with the kind of amorphous, soft-tissue wounds that tend to linger like the stench left by his teammates in too many of the matchups in which he’s been unable to compete. His attempts to play against Minnesota despite one such issue, a gamy hamstring, were admirable but useless, since he was undeniably less than his best self. He may look excellent in street clothes, but not while hanging out on the sidelines.
Gordon, like Murray, will carry significant value on the trade market. Members of Nuggets Nation will hate such a move, but the time has come.
Christian Braun has Reached His Ceiling
There was a reason Minnesota tended to leave Braun alone beyond the arc: The odds of him sinking a three were minuscule enough to require an electron microscope to see. His Thursday total of three points was only the most recent example of him coming up small when size mattered, unlike Cam Johnson, whose 27 served as a reminder that sometimes dealing a veteran (he was swapped for Michael Porter Jr.) can pay off.
Unlike Murray and Gordon, Braun is probably untradable owing to the $125 million contract extension he inked in 2025. But anyone who thinks he’s the answer to anything is asking the wrong questions.
Get a Deeper Bench
The Nuggets were justly praised for their off-season efforts to strengthen their bench. But the return of Bruce Brown and acquisitions of Tim Hardaway Jr. and Jonas Valančiūnas didn’t pay the anticipated dividends against the Wolves. True, Brown added pop on the defensive end and Hardaway did likewise from deep; he finished game six with a respectable but not spectacular thirteen points. However, Val was a substitute for Jokić rather than a supplement, and as the Minnesota combo of Rudy Gobert and Naz Reid demonstrated, the ability to have two bigs on the floor simultaneously provides a tremendous advantage.
As for the rest of the role players, they added way less than the T-Wolves on the back end of the roster. When disaster looms, who ya gonna call? Not Zeke Nnaji, Jalen Pickett or DaRon Holmes II. That’s for damn sure.
In short, the Nuggets backups need the kind of upgrade that that an Indeed job search can provide.
David Adelman is no Michael Malone
Adelman became the Nuggets’ head coach after Malone’s hard-assery began to irritate both his employers and his charges. But after witnessing Adelman’s mild-mannered efforts for the past year or so, we miss that nettlesome intensity. Adelman doesn’t appear to be a gifted tactician — his in-game adjustments are frequently ineffectual — and he hasn’t added anything of substance to the Nuggets’ sets on either end of the floor. Granted, the injuries to Gordon and Peyton Watson, a genuinely important piece who wasn’t able to get on the court for a single second against Minnesota, weren’t his fault. But he was outcoached by the T-Wolves’ Chris Finch to an absolutely embarrassing degree. The only thing he motivated for most Colorado basketball lovers was a desire for him to be replaced.
We’re not arguing for these five options to be implemented immediately or en masse. But a lot of serious somethings must take place to prevent the Jokić era from becoming a disappointing one-and-done. And we’re watching.
