Before the season, I thought Denver would be one of the most interesting teams in the NBA, because after more than 18 months of injuries, false starts and frustrations — with, in fairness, a couple of MVP trophies mixed in — we’d get to see the Nuggets the way they were meant to be seen.
We’d only briefly glimpsed the version of that team. Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon played just five games together after Gordon arrived at the 2021 trade deadline; that core shared the court for only 117 minutes before Murray’s ACL tear and Porter’s injured back pushed pause on the franchise’s best-laid plans.