Each week during the 2025-26 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.
Last time: The Golden State Warriors are cooked
Fact or Fiction: Nikola Jokić’s Denver Nuggets will be just fine
Nikola Jokić, the NBA’s best player, is hurt, and he is rarely so.
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The ripple effects of a hyperextension to his left knee, which will cost him at least four weeks of the season, will be many. Because the NBA requires its players to appear in 65 games to be eligible for its postseason awards, Jokić’s quest to join Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, LeBron James and Wilt Chamberlain as the sixth player ever to win four MVP awards may be on hold for another year.
(The 65-game rule is revealing itself to be ridiculous, as both Jokić and Victor Wembanyama — once favorites to win the MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards, respectively — may no longer be in the conversation for either honor before we reach the season’s midway point. The media is fully capable of weighing the entire scope of a player’s candidacy, including missed time, without an arbitrary cutoff.)
Here, though, we are more concerned with Jokić’s Denver Nuggets and what this injury means for them.
After all, the Nuggets, when healthy, or when healthier (we’ll get to their additional injury woes), looked every bit as good as the team that won the 2023 NBA championship, if not better. Certainly deeper. Because of Jokić they felt like the biggest threat to the Oklahoma City Thunder in a seven-game series, even as Wembanyama’s San Antonio Spurs beat the defending champs three times in a two-week span.
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The Nuggets are, as we speak, in third place in the Western Conference, owners of a 23-10 record, comfortably on another side of the bracket where they would not have to face the Thunder until the Western Conference finals. It is right about where they wanted to be and where we expected them to be.
That was a big deal, too, because Jokić had maintained a 56-win pace in the absences of three starters — Aaron Gordon, Cam Johnson and Christian Braun — all of whom remain on the injury report. That is right: Jamal Murray, who could be in line for his first All-Star selection, is now the team’s sole healthy starter.
With the newly acquired Jonas Valančiūnas in place of Jokić and homegrown talents Peyton Watson, Spencer Jones and Jalen Pickett in tow, Murray led the Nuggets to a 106-103 victory against the Toronto Raptors in their first game without their offensive hub. Denver head coach David Adelman was visibly pleased with his team’s performance, knowing how difficult it is going to be to win at all without Jokić.
“It’s gonna be like this every night,” he said. “We’re gonna have to find a way to get to the fourth quarter.”
That will not be easy. When Jokić has been on the bench this season, the Nuggets have been outscored by 5.3 points per 100 possessions, operating at a 26-win pace. In a relatively small sample size, without Jokić, Gordon, Johnson and Braun, the Nuggets have been outscored by 19.8 points per 100 meaningful possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass, or worse than the bottom-dwelling Washington Wizards.
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On the bright side, Denver has one of the league’s easiest schedules in January, featuring 11 games against could-be lottery teams, including a pair apiece against both the Wizards and Brooklyn Nets.
Then again, the Nuggets are now without Valančiūnas, too, as he suffered a right calf strain in the win over Toronto, and he too will miss at least four weeks. That leaves DaRon Holmes, a 2024 draft selection who has played a total of 34 minutes in his NBA career, as the team’s lone healthy center. This is bad.
[Get more Nuggets news: Denver team feed]
Just how bad is going to be the question. The Nuggets lead the sixth-place Minnesota Timberwolves by only three games in the loss column. Drop any lower than that, and Denver is in danger of losing its grip on a guaranteed playoff seed. And the seventh-place Phoenix Suns trail the Nuggets by just four losses.
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It is likely that Denver takes a tumble down the standings. If they go 4-13 in the month of January — entirely within the realm of possibility — the Suns would only need to play .500 in order to catch them.
Remember, though, that Jokić will be back, as will Gordon, Johnson, Braun and Valančiūnas — all presumably by the All-Star break, when the Nuggets will have two months to play themselves back into championship contention. They should still operate at their 56-win pace, if not even better, and settle somewhere around 50 wins, which was good for anywhere from the third to the fifth seed last year.
Worse-case scenario: The Nuggets fall into a fourth or fifth seed and have to play the Thunder in the second round, where they took Oklahoma City to seven games — despite a similar litany of injuries — last season. Or worst-case scenario: They fall into the play-in tournament, where they would have to win one of two games (does anyone think they wouldn’t?) and could face OKC in the playoffs’ opening round.
Just as likely, the Nuggets could play their way back into the third seed. Or land the sixth seed.
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Is either scenario really so bad? They will, in all likelihood, have to face the Thunder anyway, and couldn’t it be advantageous to play them earlier in the postseason, when the wear and tear of the playoffs on Jokić’s knee, Gordon’s hamstring and so on and so on will not be so harsh? And we could either be treated to one of the great first-round series of all time or a Western Conference finals for the ages.
Either way, the Nuggets are not cooked. They are merely on hiatus, as our League Pass watching will be less entertaining without Jokić in rotation. But we have seen enough to know: The Nuggets are capable of winning the title again, capable of beating the Thunder, so long as Jokić is healthy, and with two months still to build chemistry they can still hit the ground running in the playoffs, even if on the road.
And who knows: Maybe this experience for Watson, Jones and Pickett, plus all the other role players who could be called upon in a playoff series, will better prepare them for the moments that actually matter.
Determination: Fact. The Nuggets will be just fine.
