DENVER — Three veteran minimum offers sat on the table. The Miami Heat had called. So had Washington. New Orleans made a pitch. Each could have paid DeRozan more than the $3.9 million Denver was offering, and each one represented a team that would build something around him rather than fit him into a structure already built around a three-time MVP.
Then Nikola Jokic picked up the phone.
The moment DeRozan described to those close to him was not a difficult calculation once the call came. The 6-time NBA All-Star, who had spent 18 seasons scoring his way into the record books and out of every franchise that decided his value was too expensive to keep, chose the smallest contract of the offers in front of him. He signed with the Denver Nuggets on September 8 for one year and $3.9 million, according to Yahoo Sports, because Jokic told him he was the piece they needed and meant it enough to say so personally.
DeRozan is 37 years old. He has averaged more than 20 points in each of the last three seasons, including 20-plus with the Sacramento Kings last year on nearly 50 percent shooting. He has been an All-Star six times. He has never won an NBA championship. That last fact is the one that organized the offseason decision.
The Sacramento Kings waived him earlier this summer. The organization, rebuilding on a budget, made a cost-cutting move and moved on. For another player at 37, that might have been the occasion to consider a transition role, a front-office position, or a farewell tour somewhere affordable. For DeRozan, it was the moment that clarified what he still wanted and what the remaining window to get it looked like.
Jokic was not the only Nugget who recruited him. Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon were both in communication with DeRozan throughout the process, each making the case for Denver’s system, its championship experience, and the specific role DeRozan would play. The Nuggets had been monitoring DeRozan’s situation since February, when it became clear the Kings would not be retaining him long-term. The recruitment intensified once he hit the open market, and it succeeded not because Denver offered the most money but because it offered the most credible path to a ring.
What the Nuggets learned from the 2023 championship run is that a player who can create his own shot under pressure, without competing with Jokic’s gravity, is worth more than his per-minute statistics suggest. Bruce Brown Jr. played that role in 2023. The situations are not identical, and the specific functions will not overlap precisely, but the operational logic is the same: Denver needs a reliable secondary creator who does not require the ball to score and does not disrupt the system when he has it. As CBS Sports noted in its breakdown of the signing, the midrange pull-up is a shot Denver’s opponents consistently leave open because the system’s gravity pulls help defense toward Jokic.
Denver finished last season with a first-round exit that did not reflect the potential of their core group. The starting lineup of Murray, Braun, Johnson, Gordon, and Jokic played only 23 games together, won 18 of them, and posted a net rating of plus-12.9. The injury attrition that broke the lineup apart is the context for why DeRozan’s durability (he has missed fewer than 15 games in each of his last four full seasons) was part of the pitch as much as his scoring average.
The Nuggets open training camp on September 29. The regular season begins October 20. Both dates matter in a way they would not if the roster were still the one that flamed out in the first round.
The Western Conference heading into 2026-27 is a different structure than it was a year ago. The Kawhi Leonard trade to the Toronto Raptors, approved by the NBA last week, ended one of the more disorienting franchise situations in recent memory, while federal prosecutors in Brooklyn continue examining the salary cap arrangement that produced the harshest franchise penalty in NBA history. The West is sorting itself out. Denver is betting that what it adds to that equation is a 37-year-old who still makes the shot and a three-time MVP who called first.
DeRozan has played too long and scored too consistently to arrive in Denver as anything other than what he is: a player who has been very good for a very long time, has never been in the right place at the right time, and is now choosing the right place on his own terms even if those terms involve a fraction of what he could have earned. He chose $3.9 million and a shot at a ring over something larger and something safer. Jokic called. DeRozan answered. What comes next is the one question his resume does not yet have an answer for.
