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The Denver Nuggets, who have consistently been among the best teams in the NBA the last two years, are currently eighth in the Western Conference. While there is still quite a lot of time to fix the issues shown so far this season, the early struggles prompted Charles Barkley to publicly plea for more help for Nuggets star Nikola Jokic.
Jokic is widely considered the frontrunner or one of the top two candidates to win MVP, an award he has already earned three times. However, his heroics have only been enough to lead Denver to an 11-8 record, which puts the Nuggets four games back from the first-place Oklahoma City Thunder, a team Denver battled with throughout the 2023-24 season for the first seed in the West.
During halftime of the Nuggets' 119-115 win vs. the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday, Barkley took the time to say that Jokic, who finished the game with 38 points, 10 rebounds, 6 assists, and 5 steals, needs more help if Denver has a chance to win another championship.
“I hope they make a trade. You cannot waste the Joker's career. He is the best player in the world,” Barkley said. “They let two guys go off the bench that were very vital to them winning the championship (Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope). Their bench is weaker than water…”
“If you got a guy that great, you gotta win some more,” Barkley added. “He's got another five years. When he gets older, his game is still going to be fine because he's not the most athletic brother in the world. You cannot waste this guy's prime. This guy is the best player in the world. Get greedy.”
Nuggets, Nikola Jokic in need of more bench production
Although the Nuggets very well could have inched closer or eclipsed the second apron in order to re-sign Caldwell-Pope, who inked a three-year, $66 million contract with the Orlando Magic over the summer, Denver could not offer Brown, as a result of bird rights limitations, the two-year, $45 million deal he ultimately signed with the Indiana Pacers weeks after winning the 2023 NBA title with the Nuggets.
Nonetheless, the departures of Caldwell-Pope and Brown, as well as Jeff Green, have forced the Nuggets to adjust. Last season, Denver allocated more minutes to Christian Braun and Peyton Watson to make up for the loss of Brown and Green. This season, Braun replaced Caldwell-Pope in the starting lineup and Watson has evolved into the Nuggets' sixth man, while second-year player Julian Strawther and offseason addition Russell Westbrook have become key parts of the eight-man rotation.
If Denver is to make a trade or multiple this season, the two most likely candidates to be shipped out would seem to be Zeke Nnaji and Dario Saric. Nnaji, a 2020 first-round draft pick by the Nuggets, has seen his minutes decrease each of the last few years — he played a career-high 17 minutes per game in 2021-22 and has since been relegated to a 5-minute-per-game player.
Saric joined the team in the offseason but has failed to make an impact; he is shooting 26.3% on threes and 30.0% from the field, which head coach Michael Malone is seemingly aware of considering Saric has played eight combined minutes over the past two games.
Nnaji ($8,888,889) and Saric ($5,168,000) make $14,056,889 when aggregated, meaning the Nuggets could trade for one or multiple players with contracts worth that much or less. Saric, as a result of his offseason signing, cannot be traded until Dec. 15.
The Nuggets are back in action tonight when they match up with the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first leg of a three-game Eastern Conference road trip.
