The Denver Nuggets are exactly six weeks away from kicking off their 2025-26 NBA season with a new-look team around superstar Nikola Jokic. Jokic has been keeping busy in recent weeks by representing his native country of Serbia at the ongoing EuroBasket tournament, where he has put together some mammoth stat lines to help keep his team afloat despite some injury concerns.
Despite this, Jokic's averages for the tournament, by his standards, have been a bit pedestrian, and recently, ESPN NBA insider Brian Windhorst took to the Hoop Collective podcast to shed some light on why he believes that may be the case.
“I was talking to a guy that I know who’s a Serbian NBA executive…And I was like, I don’t trust, you know, Serbia is known to pull some punches, you know, play a little, play a little game where they don’t show their full situation…until it really matters. And he was like, no, he’s like, ‘Jokic is not quite on his game. He’s not quite in top shape.' You know, he warned me,” said Windhorst, per YardBaker, via Sports Illustrated.
While Jokic has never physically appeared to be in NBA shape throughout his career, his conditioning has never been an issue during his time with the Nuggets, and it's unlikely that Denver fans have anything to worry about in that regard.
Can the Nuggets bounce back?
Last year, the Denver Nuggets very nearly took out the eventual champion Oklahoma City Thunder before bowing out to them in seven game in the Western Conference semifinals.
This offseason, the Nuggets have added some nice talent by trading Michael Porter Jr. for Brooklyn Nets wing Cam Johnson and adding Tim Hardaway Jr. and former 2023 champion Bruce Brown in free agency.
The big question now for the Nuggets is whether or not Jamal Murray is still a legitimate number two option on a championship team, which has proven not to be the case in the last two years since Denver won the Larry O'Brien trophy.
Still, with Jokic in the mix, anything is possible, even if his conditioning could use some work before the season starts.
