Denver Nuggets 2025-26 Season Prediction | Offseason additions, Valanciunas future in Denver?

Denver Nuggets 2025-26 Season Prediction | Offseason additions, Valanciunas future in Denver?

Back here on HQ Spotlight over in the NBA, there are some reports out there saying that Nicole Yogic told the Nuggets he’s not going to sign an extension this summer. Instead, the three-time MVP plans to wait until next summer when he can potentially get 80 million more. I mean, can you blame him? I don’t know. The Joker just recently became eligible, of course, for that extra 3 years and $212 million on his current supermax deal, but he is opting to wait a year. That is what we’re hearing. He has two years left on his contract. So, let’s bring in our NBA analysts Sam Quinn and John Gonzalez here to talk about it. The Joker ultimately pushing off that contract extension until next summer where he can potentially make 80 more million dollar. So, John, I’ll come to you first here. Kind of break down the biggest impact here for Denver when it comes to the Joker signing later versus now. Yeah, for them, I mean, they’re just going to offer him the money and and be happy when he signs whatever deal he’s going to sign. From his perspective, it makes more sense to wait and get the extra year. plus the$80 million dollars. But he’s not going anywhere. And I think that I think if you’re Joker, you should be pretty happy about the team that they’ve assembled around him. Jacqueline, I think it’s the best unit that he’s had up to and including the team that won the championship a few years back. They swap out MPJ for Cam Johnson. I wasn’t a big MPJ guy. I thought uh Cam Cam Johnson just like in terms of the player is a better player. Now they have to give up a first round pick to do it, but they got cheaper by doing so. And then they turn that into Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr., And you know, fingers crossed that he doesn’t go to the Greek Basketball League, Jonas Valenunis. So, if you’re Joker, you’re looking at the squad going, “Okay, this is something I can work with here.” And I have them right there with the Rockets, uh, as a team that can challenge Oklahoma City in the West this year. Yeah. Jokic is not Giannis Antenna, right? He’s not giving interviews to the New York Times talking about how, oh, I want a second ring so badly, I might leave Milwaukee to do it. No, he’s not batting his eyelashes at other teams. He’s just making the smart financial decision here. I’d rather get that extra $80 million as well. If they hadn’t had the really strong off seasonason that they did have, I might be a little bit more concerned about his future in Denver. But they had a great off season, right? They improved on the Michael Porter Jr. spot with Cam Johnson. They bring back Bruce Brown. They get Tim Hardaway Jr. Hopefully Valentunis is on the team. There’s just no reason to be afraid of him leaving at this point. I think that team is too good. He’s too entrenched there. there are too many financial indicators for him not to sign that extension. I think he’s in a great spot there. I think they’re in a great spot with him. Sam, you mentioned some of those additions right in Cam Johnson and Tim Hardway Jr. and both of you guys, it feels like the general consensus is that this is a great unit that they have around the Joker. But why is that, Sam? What did those moves if we get into the weeds here? What is that ultimately going to help with the Nuggets in terms of their game? Yeah, the Nuggets really had three significant flaws last year, mostly relating to their bench. Backup center has been a problem forever, right? Whether it was young Isaiah Hartenstein, Demarcus Cousins, Mason Plumbley, whoever they’ve had, whenever they’ve brought in somebody else for Joic off the bench, it’s gone poorly. Jonas Valenunis is probably best suited to be their backup center of anybody they’ve had because he can be an offensive hub for 10 minutes. He can get you a bunch of rebounds, get you some buckets, protect the rim a little bit, not much of a mover, but if you just plant him in front of the basket, he can get you some blocks, make it hard for the other team to score at the rim. They needed to shoot more threes. They took the fewest in the NBA last season. Well, Tim Hardaway Jr. is going to fire away as many threes as you let him, right? They needed point of attack defense. Bruce Brown obviously has proven he’s a great fit on that team. He’s going to be very, very helpful for defending other top guards. So, basically every need that they had, they’ve addressed in some way, shape, or form. I go into the season thinking the Nuggets are about as deep as they’ve ever been during the Yokic era. Yeah, I’m with Sam. Sam nailed it. I love what the Nuggets have done. Jacquine. I mean, again, we go back to Michael Porter Jr. I was waiting for him, just like the Denver Nuggets and Denver Nuggets fans were waiting for him to take that next step to being all-star caliber. He has all the tools. He’s big. He’s strong. He’s fast. He’s athletic. He can shoot. He just never made that jump. I think Cam Johnson is an upgrade in that starting unit. And then the main problem for me with the Nuggets was their lack of depth. Right? When you have Russell Westbrook, who uh Joker had sort of made turned into a reclamation project as your best bench option, you’re probably in some trouble. Uh last year, they certainly were. This year they’ve got Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr. and again fingers crossed Jonas Valenunis which is makes you eight deep. That pushes Julian Strawther and Pton Watson who were trying to be you know square peg round hole crammed into that rotation last year down to your ninth and tenth men. I mean you’re in the playoffs generally it’s sort of trust uh seven or trust eight play seven, right? So now you’ve got your solid eight and you’re probably not going to get too many minutes out of Yonas Valenunis if he’s on the team. Again, fingers crossed. But I really like the other two guys there. So yeah, full marks to the revamped Nuggets front office. They’ve done a really, really good job overhauling this team. And John, you said fingers crossed for Valenunis for a reason, right? Because he’s not officially a Denver Nugget just yet. Apparently there’s some hiccups with his contract. Um, do you think the pathway is ultimately going to be clear for him to step in there and be like Sam mentioned, potentially their backup center there in Denver? Well, it fits on paper. It makes a lot of sense both for the player and for the team. But the reason why this is messy, uh, Jacqueline, is because Jonas Valenunis reportedly wants to sign with Ponathanos of Greece. Now, if I could put on my senior Greece basket correspondent hat. I’ve been to Greece many times. I have covered Greek basketball when Rick Patino was the coach of Panathanikos. I can tell you that it is kind of wild to me that that Jonas Valenunis wants to leave the NBA and go to play for Ponathanos where I was telling Sam about this. It is completely lawless. I mean, they set off flares and pyrochnics in the arena. The owner of Ponathanikos is a basically a wannabe super villain who gets into all kinds of verbal shouting matches with the owner of Olympiaos, their their uh main rival. And so the Nuggets have gone and told Yonis Valenunis that they intend to hold him to his contract and not let him out to go to Ponathanos of the Greek league. If he if he decides that he’s going to play basketball, it looks like it has to be in the NBA. But I wonder whether or not Jonas Valenunis is just going to say, “No, no thanks. I’m going to sit this one out.” It’s a messy situation right now. But if they can convince him to play for them, he’s a perfect fit. Yeah, John, he is a perfect fit. But I’m going to play some devil’s advocate here. Let’s say we do go through a world where Yonas just says, “I don’t want to play for the Nuggets no matter what.” They do still have some options, right? They haven’t touched their mid-level exception. If they don’t have Yonas on their books for next season, they’re pretty far below the cap or below the luxury tax at that point, right? They could add a pretty significant piece some other way. Or maybe you trade Yonas before he retires so some other team can take advantage of his desire to leave, buy him out, not pay him any money, right? Maybe you combined him with Zeke Naji. Maybe that’s a way to get off of that bad contract. So whether he plays for them or not, I do think that trade is going to be helpful for them because it got Dario Sarich’s dead money off of their books. Whether it’s Valenunis or somebody else, I’m confident they’re going to have a reasonably good backup center on that team. We’re just going to have to wait and see who it’s going to be. So, we know Denver, they pushed OKC to seven games in the Western Conference semiis. So, if we look at all the moves that they did, and both of you guys seem very satisfied with Denver’s offseason moves. What is the season prediction, and I don’t want to range, gentlemen, if you must, if you must, but like let’s try and nail down a specific ending spot. And Sam Quinn, I have a feeling I mean, in the commercial break, you gave us down to the score of what you thought it was going to be to end the season. Yeah. Hey, you know what, Jacqueline, let’s get specific, right? I’m going to see they lose the Western Conference Finals to the Oklahoma City Thunder in six games with game six being a final score of 101 to 86. Let’s check the tape here again in 10 11 months. See how close I got. But look, there’s no fault of their own that they exist at the same time as this juggernaut in Oklahoma City. They took the Thunder to seven games last year. I do think there’s a world in which they beat Oklahoma City next year. I’m not ready to pick it yet. Let’s see how the regular season goes. For now, I’m gonna say they play a reasonably competitive Western Conference finals against the Thunder and lose valiantly in game six. Yeah. So, there’s an alternate universe here, Jacqueline, as you had mentioned, where they take the Oklahoma City Thunder to the to seven games where in some other parallel universe, they end up winning that. Maybe they go to the finals, maybe they win. They’re a really good team. I know you’re trying to pin me down here. Just like our producer James, I can’t be pinned because I think yes, Oklahoma City is the best team, but the Rockets and the Nuggets are right there. And if you told me, you put those three teams in a hat, you pick one out, and that’s the team that ended up winning the Western Conference, I would believe you. Now, I still think Oklahoma City is the favorite, but the Rockets and the Nuggets are certainly right there. I will say that they’re the three seed. Their floor is probably a second round exit, but their ceiling is an NBA championship. They’re every bit as capable of the Rockets and uh the defending champions Oklahoma City of winning the NBA championship coming up, especially if Yonas doesn’t go to the Greek League. I really like the Nuggets, but wide variance here, Jacqueline. Yeah, I was going to say I guess that is what happens when this Western Conference is so crowded. We’re getting ranges for like the top couple of teams of where they could end up. John, Sam, we certainly appreciate it. As we take a closer look at the Denver Nuggets in a very crowded Western Conference, you’re looking at the odds here, according to FanDuel, to win the West. The Thunder, of course, spending a whole lot of money, $822 million to their core three over the past week and a half or so. They are the favorites to win the West at plus 160. The Nuggets the next best odds at plus470.

John Gonzales and Sam Quinn join CBS Sports HQ Spotlight to preview the Denver Nuggets 2025-26 season.

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