Nikola Jokic insists he’s a Nuggets lifer, but trade buzz will get louder if team struggles and he keeps crapping on fans appeared first on ClutchPoints. Add ClutchPoints as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Denver Nuggets have stumbled out of the gates to a 1-2 record this season, recently getting blasted at home by the winless Golden State Warriors. Nikola Jokic hasn’t been great, at least by his standards, so far this year, and has also spent his postgame press conferences repeatedly calling out fans who have voiced their displeasure with the team by booing.
Jokic has stated that he plans on signing an extension with the Nuggets for the long haul next summer, when he will be eligible to make more money, but that isn’t going to stop fans from putting together their best trade packages for the star in the meantime, especially if the team’s struggles continue this season.
Last year, the Nuggets went on a hot stretch into the playoffs to enter as the number three seed in the Western Conference, but their lack of size, athleticism, and depth were all thoroughly exposed by a Minnesota Timberwolves team that was playing without multiple starters, including star Anthony Edwards, by the end of the series.
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Instead of addressing those issues this offseason, the Nuggets opted to sign and trade one of the only true sources of size and athleticism on the roster, young wing Peyton Watson, to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and trotted back the same starting lineup that crashed and burned so spectacularly in last year’s postseason.
While the combination of Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Cam Johnson, and Christian Braun should still theoretically be able to win Denver a lot of regular season games, that might not be the case if Jokic continues to struggle as he has so far this season, shooting a ghastly percentage from beyond the arc and also reverting to a turnstile on the defensive end of the floor.
If the Nuggets continue to lose games in ugly fashion, it wouldn’t be a surprise to hear trade murmurs surrounding the star begin to pick up.
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