There has been so much pressure on the Denver Nuggets to get back to the NBA Finals and win another championship.
After winning their first title in franchise history during the 2022-23 season, the Nuggets haven’t come truly close to repeating that level of success ever since.
Losing in 2023-24 to the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 7 on their home floor was seen as heartbreaking but an aberration; ever since then, the Nuggets have been no closer. They lost in seven game to the eventual NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder in 2024-25. This season, they didn’t even make it out of the first round, losing to an injured Timberwolves team that wasn’t close to full capacity.
Denver’s gone backwards, but that might be par for the course in today’s NBA.
Commissioner Adam Silver has made several unique changes to the NBA since his appointment for David Stern in the early 2010’s. There were few changes he made early on, but over the last five years, he has introduced the Play-In Tournament, the NBA Cup, and more stringent financial and competitive penalties for expensive salaries just to name a few differences.
The most recent change – a revamping of the lottery odds and additional penalties levied to “tanking” teams – is another major evolution to the sport.
The goal: make the 82-game season as important as humanly possible.
In a sport defined by playoff triumphs over everything else, Silver and the NBA are clearly going a different route. They want every game to matter, to be an event, to have competitive stakes, and they’re willing to pay out the nose to make it happen.
That payment is happening in several ways. The first is from the good teams, often the priciest teams. To be financed like a great team, an NBA team must sacrifice certain roster building mechanisms that would keep them great for a longer period of time. From expensive and inflexible player salaries, to frozen draft picks, to significant trade restrictions, Silver and the NBA owners have made it very difficult for teams to spend exorbitant amounts of money and live to tell the tale.
Take the Oklahoma City Thunder for example: they just lost Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals (heartbreaking, I know) and their reward is they’re about to be a significantly more expensive roster. So much so that there are currently think pieces being written by every national author about which Thunder role players (and how many) are expected to be sacrificed in cost cutting maneuvers).
Now, OKC’s tax bill is expected to be significantly higher than Denver’s if they retain everyone, but that’s the price of doing a really good job. The Thunder have several players worth the price because they won 64 games this season and 68 the year before.
But there are other costs that aren’t being discussed enough.
The new lottery reform should in theory make the bottom of the NBA better. There’s no reason for the worst of the worst teams to be so bad anymore. The new lottery odds have been flattened and actually inverted in some ways, meaning the worst of the worst teams will still have reason to play their good players at the end of the year so that they have better odds at a top draft pick rather than worse.
Then, there’s the 65-game rule for NBA awards. All players want to be eligible for awards if they can be, especially while they’re tied to contract incentives. That’s caused players and teams to be a bit less cautious than before when it comes to wear and tear. Players can’t just check in and play five minutes either. They have to play full games or else be ineligible.
Is there a direct correlation between hamstring/calf strains and the 65-game rule? I don’t know. It’s worth exploring though, because anecdotally, it feels like players are seeing a rise in muscle-related injuries with the extra wear and tear on the body. It’s possible that Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell just got unlucky, but the Thunder have had a long two years, and it doesn’t surprise me that some of their players broke down physically at the end of it all.
And so, here’s my hypothesis:
The NBA has put too much of an emphasis on the 82-game regular season and overcorrected on a sport meant to be performed at highest levels in the playoffs.
Adam Silver would likely scoff at this take. He would suggest that the 82 games all matter and should be treated as such. Every game matters in the NBA, even the Washington Wizards vs Utah Jazz, and the March 26th, 2027 matchup between those two teams (or whichever teams are battling to stay out of the bottom three of the lottery standings) will be better, more competitive basketball than it was before. And that’s why it matters.
Adam Silver would also probably point to the parity in the NBA Finals over the last seven seasons as a good thing. Here are the last eight Finals matchups with the winner in bold:
2019 – Golden State vs Toronto 2020 – LA Lakers vs Miami 2021 – Phoenix vs Milwaukee 2022 – Golden State vs Boston 2023 – Denver vs Miami 2024 – Dallas vs Boston 2025 – Oklahoma City vs Indiana 2026 – San Antonio vs New York13 different franchises, out of a possible 16, made the Finals during that stretch. The only overlap happened with Golden State, Miami, and Boston, and two of those aren’t anywhere close to returning to the Finals as currently constructed. Silver would probably call that a win for the NBA.
I don’t necessarily think it’s great, and if you’re a Nuggets fan, you’re not exactly thrilled about the idea of parity when you finally won your first championship right as many of these rules have gone into effect.
The reality is that it’s really, really difficult to prioritize both the regular season and playoffs in today’s NBA. Younger teams are a bit more capable of doing it consistently, but the older teams that do it can only do so for a season or two at a time. The NBA is moving faster than ever. The games are the highest level intensity from a physical perspective that they’ve ever been (in terms of pace, miles run, change of direction, offensive skill level, etc.).
It’s tough to envision the Nuggets keeping up. How can Nikola Jokic of all people prioritize being a regular season anchor, moving more laterally and vertically on defense, AND keeping himself ready for the playoffs from a physical perspective that just keeps getting more and more intense by the minute? How can Jamal Murray? How can Aaron Gordon?
The Nuggets have struggled with this, and they know they have to be better. The more intensity they play with though, the more likely injuries occur that will preclude them from winning at all.
The life span for contenders has shortened before our very eyes. It’s not a Nuggets problem either. The Warriors were already at the end of their rope, but the Los Angeles Lakers’ window closed very quickly (until they randomly added Luka Doncic and the window is now cracked again). The Milwaukee Bucks’ pathway looks like Denver’s current path, just two years in advance. The Boston Celtics lost in the second round in 2025 and traded all their pricy role players soon after. Their window isn’t closed, but they might do something significant to reignite it.
And now, the Oklahoma City Thunder just lost. Nobody will say their window is “closed” but their biggest advantage (incredible levels of depth and effort) is going to take a hit as the months and years wear on. Their core won’t be able to keep up that pace forever, though they have draft picks for years, so they may not have to.
The long and short of it is this: the NBA has done everything in its power to demolish dynasties. Competitively, financially, and physically, it’s more difficult than ever before to win consistently in the NBA. That’s the way Adam Silver wanted it though. David Stern famously joked that he hoped the Lakers would face the Lakers in the NBA Finals for the best ratings possible. Silver is different. He wants the basketball to be extremely high level.
He just doesn’t care which team gets there.
That doesn’t bode well for the Nuggets. They aren’t in a great situation anymore. They have some great players, including one of the greatest players of all-time in Nikola Jokic. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough anymore, because teams have to be physically capable, mentally tough, and extremely skilled to handle the full 82 games and playoffs now.
And it just got even tough for teams like the Nuggets, because there are fewer “gimme” wins in the regular season than ever before. Trying hard in the regular season is going to quickly weed out which teams are serious contenders and which ones aren’t.
We will see if the Nuggets can put together a group that’s capable of weathering this new storm.
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