Jokic on early exit: Nuggets 'far' from contention…

MINNEAPOLIS — In the disappointing aftermath of a surprising first-round playoff exit, Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic made clear that his long-term view of a one-franchise NBA career remains unchanged.

“I still want to be a Nugget forever,” Jokic said.

Jokic, 31, has two years and $121.9 million remaining on his current contract, but the second season is a player option, meaning Jokic is under team control only through next season, typically generating a level of unease around an NBA megastar.

But Jokic will be extension eligible this summer for up to four years and around $293 million, giving both the franchise and its mid-prime cornerstone a chance to pledge a long-term recommitment to each other. Jokic was asked about his plan to sign it and repeated, “I still want to be a Nugget forever.”

But that doesn’t mean Jokic enters the offseason in a bright mood. His Nuggets won 54 games in the regular season, entered the playoffs considered realistic title contenders and instead lost 4-2 in the first round to a Minnesota Timberwolves team that didn’t have star Anthony Edwards for the final two games of the series.

“We just lost in the first round,” Jokic said. “I think we are far away [from title contention].”

Jokic led the Nuggets to a title in 2023 and knows what is necessary to be at a championship level. Does he believe changes are needed?

“That’s not my decision, to be honest,” Jokic said. “Definitely, if we were in Serbia, we would all get fired.”

This was arguably the worst playoff series of Jokic’s career. He had 28 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds in the 110-98 Game 6 elimination on Thursday night, but even some beefed-up stats late in the series didn’t fully mask an uncharacteristic start to the series, which buried the Nuggets in a 3-1 hole.

Jokic made only 39 percent of his shots the first four games, a stunning conversion rate for a future Hall of Famer who has a career 56 percent field goal rate, once shot 63 percent for a full season and, before the Minnesota matchup, never made below 47 percent of his shots in a playoff series.

“A lot,” Jokic said when asked how much blame he shoulders. “I needed to play better. I must play better. I think I was getting in the rhythm from the third game, but I needed to play much better.”

Jokic got little help from his co-star. Starting point guard Jamal Murray had the best statistical regular season of his life, averaging a career-best 25.4 points. He made his first All-Star team and is expected to be named to an All-NBA team for the first time.

But Murray ran into a matchup against Jaden McDaniels in the first round, and Minnesota’s breakout two-way star bottled up Murray while Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert clogged up the paint.

Murray made only 46 of his 139 shots (33 percent) in the series and missed 13 of his 17 shots in Game 6, struggling to create separation against McDaniels, who generated headlines after Minnesota’s Game 2 win when he individually called Jokic, Murray and several other Nuggets “bad defenders.”

“If you saw the interviews, you know all them were excited to play us,” Murray said. “They got up to play us. They enjoyed playing us. We have to match that. We have to feel the same way about them.”

Jokic and Murray said they still believe their two-man game can be the heart of an elite-level offense despite the first-round struggles. Denver had an NBA-best 121.2 offensive rating in the regular season.

Assuming Jokic and Murray remain, the spotlight will turn to other aspects of the franchise and roster, beginning with David Adelman, who just finished his first full season as head coach after taking over for the fired Mike Malone right before the 2025 playoffs.

“It’s not his fault we couldn’t rebound,” Jokic said of Adelman. “It’s not his fault we couldn’t catch the ball very well. There is nothing to blame David Adelman. It’s all us.”

Last May, the Nuggets were eliminated by the eventual champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder, in seven games, sending them to the summer in a bit more optimistic tone.

This April, they just lost to a shorthanded Timberwolves team that didn’t have Edwards, Donte DiVincenzo or Ayo Dosunmu by the time the series closed.

But Denver had its share of injury excuses. Rising wing Peyton Watson missed the entire series because of a hamstring strain suffered on April 1. He will be a restricted free agent in July.

Starting wing Aaron Gordon also missed a chunk of the series, suffering a calf injury in Game 2, missing Games 3, 5 and 6, while laboring through 23 minutes in Game 4, looking nothing like his normal self.

It’s the second straight playoffs Gordon has been impacted by a soft tissue injury. He suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain late in the Thunder series last May and was limited to only 36 games played this season because of recurring hamstring injuries.

Gordon, a massively impactful player for the Nuggets when healthy, has three years and $103.6 million left on his current contract.

“They missed a bunch of guys tonight and still won,” Jokic said. “Did we need them? Definitely. But if they are not here, we cannot think if, if, if.”

The Nuggets didn’t get a ton of supplementary help on a consistent basis beneath Jokic, Murray and Gordon on the roster pecking order.

Cam Johnson, the prized offseason addition in a trade for Michael Porter Jr., had an excellent Game 6, finishing with 27 points in 39 minutes, but was quiet in the other two road losses in the series, finishing with six and nine points, respectively. Christian Braun, whose five-year, $125 million extension kicks in next season, had only 50 total points in six games.

“I know it just ended, but I do feel like I can’t really give you a complete answer [on the bigger picture] because it was an incomplete season,” Adelman said, mentioning the injuries. “It felt like that throughout. It felt like survival.”