DENVER — Aaron Gordon walked into the Nuggets’ one-day minicamp last week carrying more than a basketball bag. He carried 33 games from last season, the number he appeared in before his body forced another early exit, and the unspoken weight of what his health means for everything else Denver is trying to figure out before training camp opens September 29.
That number matters because Nikola Jokic, the only player in league history to average a triple-double in consecutive regular seasons, has made it quietly clear that he is in no hurry to resolve his own future. He is eligible for a four-year, $278 million contract extension. He is not signing it. CBS Sports reported that Jokic plans to wait until the summer of 2027, when he would be eligible as a free agent for a five-year, $359.5 million deal, the largest contract in the history of professional basketball. He put it plainly to reporters in Serbian: “My idea is to sign next summer and stay with Denver for the rest of my career.”
The statement is meant to reassure, and for Nuggets fans it mostly does. But it also changes the franchise’s operational reality in a specific way.
Denver enters training camp not with a locked-in cornerstone, but with a superstar on a countdown that every Western Conference rival has already entered into its planning. Nikola Jokić will be 32 when the 2026–27 season ends, and he holds a $62.8 million player option for 2027–28 that he may or may not exercise.
By any honest accounting, the 2026–27 Nuggets are auditioning.
Whether they pass depends heavily on Aaron Gordon. He played only 33 games in 2025–26—not 33 meaningful games, but 33 total, during a season when Denver’s championship window was supposed to be widest.
Gordon said after last week’s minicamp that he feels good and that his body has responded well to the offseason. Those are the right answers in August. The answers that matter will come in December and February, when the schedule becomes more physical and bodies that looked fine in the fall begin to register their objections.
The roster Denver assembled around Jokic this offseason does not suggest a front office swinging for the moment. The Nuggets traded Peyton Watson to the Cleveland Cavaliers after failing to match Cleveland’s four-year, $88 million offer sheet, accepting a return package that no analyst framed as fair value for a developing 23-year-old wing. They signed DeMar DeRozan to a one-year deal and added Marvin Bagley III and Lonnie Walker IV. Denver has 14 rostered players heading into camp. The front office believes, according to CBS Sports, that a competitive 2026-27 showing will produce the extension they want without requiring them to alter their financial strategy this summer.
That logic is reasonable. It is also a bet.
DeRozan brings something specific the Nuggets did not have after Watson departed: a secondary creator capable of running a half-court offense during Jokic’s rest minutes, the kind of veteran who commands a second unit rather than merely occupying it. Sports Illustrated’s preseason breakdown projects DeRozan in that reserve role, with Cameron Johnson and Christian Braun filling out a perimeter that will need to generate its own offense more often than before. Whether a 37-year-old DeRozan, who has not played meaningful playoff basketball since the San Antonio era, can sustain that production across a full season is a question this training camp will raise and not answer.
The unanswered Jokic question carries its own weight. He finished second in MVP voting to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of Oklahoma City for the second consecutive season, despite averaging 27.7 points on 56.9 percent shooting while leading the league in both rebounds and assists. The Thunder won the championship. The argument that individual statistics without a title disqualifies a MVP candidate is exactly what his supporters dispute and exactly what appears to hold sway with voters. Denver cannot change the statistical case. What it can do is put Jokic in position to win one.
Across the Western Conference this September, franchises are answering similar questions about what they built and whether it will hold. As Luka Doncic arrived at Lakers training camp last week leaner and reset after a difficult April, the central question for the West remains whether any team can challenge a Thunder core returning intact. In Miami, where Giannis Antetokounmpo and Klay Thompson gathered for minicamp with their own title ambitions, the answer required assembling around a new dynamic entirely. Denver’s version requires nothing new, only that what it already has stays healthy and eventually signs what it needs to sign.
The Nuggets know what is at stake. Their public posture is confidence. Their offseason moves suggest a front office managing the present rather than mortgaging the future, betting that one strong season from a recovered Gordon, a contributing DeRozan, and a Jokic doing what only Jokic can do will be enough to close the deal next July.
What no one in Denver can answer yet is whether Gordon’s body cooperates, whether the roster holds when injuries redistribute the load, and whether Jokic’s stated desire to stay in Denver reflects his private calculus or just the public one.
Training camp opens in 15 days. The question opens with it.
