Nikola Jokić watched the final three and a half minutes of Monday night's matchup with the Golden State Warriors from the bench. Denver Nuggets head coach David Adelman had pulled his starters after a Gui Santos 3-pointer gave the visitors a 21-point lead — the sort of deficit that not even a three-time NBA Most Valuable Player could erase, even if he and his teammates were playing at the peak of their powers. Which, a week into the 2026-27 NBA season, the Nuggets very evidently are not.
In most cases, you'd expect that a 20-point drubbing at the hands of a Warriors team that had entered winless and mostly feckless would elicit some level of displeasure from the paying public — a smattering of jeers from the upper deck, at least. And yet, as Jokić and his teammates sat idle while the second unit played out the string, the remaining fans in the stands at Ball Arena largely sat on their hands, barely registering any noise above a murmur in the closing moments of what would settle as a 134-114 blowout.
Which, it seems, is the way Jokić would prefer it.
See, on Saturday night, the fans in attendance at Ball Arena had let loose a fusillade of boos after the Nuggets — who'd been roundly beaten by the Oklahoma City Thunder on opening night — trailed the lowly New Orleans Pelicans by as many as 23 points in their home opener before staging a fourth-quarter comeback and eventually winning in overtime. After snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, the greatest player in franchise history took those fans to task for what he saw as capricious, insufficient support.
"I think those fans who booed us, they don't need to come anymore," Jokić said, according to Bennett Durando of the Denver Post. "Because if you guys follow us, you know that we never quit and we came back from much worse or similar situations. If they ask me, they are not welcome anymore."
Two nights later, the Nuggets authored a performance in which they allowed Golden State to shoot 22-for-44 from 3-point land, got outrebounded 45-32 and never held a lead after halftime. From the 4:30 mark of the second quarter through the 6:30 mark of the third, the Warriors blitzed the hosts 33-13, building a double-digit lead that they would never relinquish behind stellar nights from rookie forward Yaxel Lendeborg (31 points, 12 rebounds, six assists) and superstar point guard Stephen Curry (24 points in 27 minutes on perfect 8-for-8 shooting).
Even after another dismal defensive outing to drop Denver to 1-2 on the young season, though, Jokić stood firm in his conviction that Nuggets fans are better served piping down, and don't have standing to let the boo birds fly:
Nikola Jokić speaks again on the boos from Game 2:
— DNVR Nuggets (@DNVR_Nuggets) October 27, 2026
"...I'm sticking to what I said...I think they are not real fans"
Full answer: pic.twitter.com/PfB4C7siXU
"I just said what I said," Jokić, um, said. "It's not something that … I'm sticking to what I said. I played in a much worse environment [in Europe]. I played in front of 10 people, 50 people, 100 people, 150,000 people, whatever — I didn't play in front of 150,000 people, like, 10,000, 15,000 — and I'm not used to the fans booing their own team [...] I've never heard that. I mean, probably they are. But I think they are not real fans."
Jokić taking Nuggets fans to task comes in the somewhat uncomfortable context of the legendary big man not being under contract beyond next season. Yes, Jokić has repeatedlydeclared his intention to remain a Nugget for life, explaining his decision to wait to ink his next extension as purely a dollars-and-cents choice; by holding off until next summer, he can sign a five-year deal that would pay him an estimated $359.5 million, and that would stand as the largest contract in NBA history, according to ESPN's Bobby Marks. Even so: With no signature secured, every rumble of discontent from the franchise cornerstone reverberates louder and wider than it otherwise might.
You'd also understand if Jokić chastising the fans for expressing their frustration seems a bit tone-deaf, given the way the last few months have unfolded in Denver.
First, the Nuggets bowed out in the first round of the playoffs for the first time in five years, losing in six games to the rival Minnesota Timberwolves — the team that ended Denver's title defense in 2024 — with three of the losses coming by double-digits. Then, they let top bench scorer Tim Hardaway Jr. walk in free agency, bid farewell to veteran reserves Bruce Brown and Jonas Valančiūnas, traded athletic young wing Peyton Watson to Cleveland for future draft capital, and did precious little to fortify the current roster beyond taking a flyer on veteran scorer DeMar DeRozan (though rookie second-round pick Trevon Brazile has shown some encouraging flashes).
The overarching message of the summer: With the Thunder and San Antonio Spurs perched atop the West, and a number of other teams taking big swings to try to combat them, the Nuggets were mostly content to stand pat and pare down their luxury tax bill rather than pushing harder to compete, even with the 31-year-old Jokić still in his prime as arguably the best player in the world. You can understand why fans might not necessarily be thrilled with that … and why, when the team comes out of the chute needing a 23-point comeback against a bad Pelicans team to avoid being 0-3, they might find themselves looking for something more.
The Nuggets are capable of giving it to them. They were without four rotation wings on Monday, with starter Cameron Johnson, Julian Strawther, Spencer Jones and offseason signee Alpha Diallo all sidelined by injury, taxing an already questionable depth chart behind linchpins Jokić, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon (who got ejected early in the fourth quarter on Monday) and Christian Braun. With the exception of Murray, those linchpins have all gotten off to slow starts offensively, headlined by Jokić, who's shooting just 41.7% from the field and 21.7% from 3-point land — miles below his typical hyper-efficient marks.
As a team, Denver sits 16th in field goal percentage, 23th in 3-point percentage and 22nd in assists, and has seen its turnover rate and free-throw attempt rate both drop out of the top 10. Add it all up, and an offense that has finished top-10 in points scored per possession for a full decade is now sputtering in 22nd place in the NBA — even with Murray and Jokić averaging 38-plus minutes a game.
For a Nuggets team that even optimistic evaluators would expect to struggle to get to league-average on defense, having an elite offense is a prerequisite for contention — or even competing, most nights. Failing to produce even a facsimile of the kind of offensive unit that Denver fans have become accustomed to seeing … well, that's the kind of thing that might get you booed, however "real" you think the fandom of the discontented parties might be.
That's the rub right now in Denver. Jokić might be justified in thinking it unfair that fans who've watched him deliver a steady stream of 50-win teams, playoff runs and the franchise's first NBA championship suddenly getting up in arms in the first half of the first home game of the season. Nuggets fans might be justified in thinking they've got the right to correctly identify that what they're seeing to start the campaign is a far cry from the level of play they've come to expect. But when everybody's got a point, it's not always easy to find a resolution.
"I think he's earned the right to have an opinion. He's had a lot of success here," Adelman told reporters, according to Durando of the Post. "And the big thing for me is the fans have been here for all this time … They've been here for [lots of winning]. The fans and players, it's communal. They feed off of each other. And just thinking back on all these environments that I've been lucky enough to be part of in this building, it's just, let's not forget that."
One surefire way to remind everyone of the good times? Get off the schneid on a two-game road trip that starts Wednesday with a rematch against the Pelicans … and, this time, maybe don't give up 73 first-half points and need a massive comeback to do it.