Subscribe
Follow Us
Recently, the Denver Nuggets made some offseason splashes by trading for Brooklyn Nets wing Cam Johnson and signing sharpshooter Tim Hardaway Jr. in free agency. The Denver front office hopes that these moves, combined with a reunion with free agent Bruce Brown, will be enough to propel the team back to its championship heights of 2023.
There is no player in the NBA that's more beneficial to play alongside as a wing shooter than Nikola Jokic, and recently, Johnson and Hardaway took to the “Young Man & The Three” podcast to break down their high hopes as teammates with the three-time MVP.
“Honestly, a big part of it is not having to play against him anymore,” Johnson joked. “He's a problem, that's it, period. He can pass, rebound, score — you don't know what you're gonna get any given day, like what mode he's in. It's an uncanny ability. He has spatial awareness, just how he feels a game, how he understands the game, like he does it in a way different than anybody else in the league.”
“For us, I really do think that walking into this situation, we're going to strive, it's going to be great, but a lot of that's just going to come from getting stops, getting easy buckets, and going out there and having a good time,” added Hardaway.
Can the Nuggets bounce back?
This past postseason, the Nuggets pushed the Oklahoma City Thunder to Game 7 in the Western Conference semifinals before ultimately bowing out. Oklahoma City went on to win the NBA championship, perhaps signaling to the Nuggets' front office that they may only be a piece or two away from winning the whole thing again.
Enter Johnson and Hardaway Jr., two elite spot-up shooters who can also provide secondary playmaking and solid defense. The Nuggets have now arguably surrounded Jokic with the best floor spacing of his career, which could prime the league's best player to have yet another MVP season in 2025-26.
“It hasn't been an easy team to guard over the past couple of years. Just being able to fit in that environment is going to be a lot of fun for us.”
The Nuggets' season is set to begin in October.
