Nuggets fans should not spend a single second panicking about this. Nikola Jokic is not going anywhere. He is just doing the math.
Jokic told reporters this week that he plans to hold off on signing a contract extension until next summer, and that his intent is to finish his career in Denver. His exact words: “My idea is to sign next summer and stay with Denver for the rest of my career.”
This is not a negotiating tactic. It is a decision to leave $80 million on the table this summer and pick it up next summer. If Jokic signs now, he can add a four-year, $278 million max extension to his current deal. If he waits until 2027, he becomes eligible for a five-year, $359.5 million supermax, the largest contract in NBA history, plus a potential no-trade clause.
The math writes itself. Waiting a year adds a fifth guaranteed season and eighty million dollars in real money. The Nuggets have no leverage to push him to sign early because Jokic is not going anywhere and there is no other team he would rather play for.
Denver has been on both sides of this before. When Jokic was drafted 41st overall in 2014, nobody bet on him becoming a three-time MVP. When he signed his first supermax in 2022, it was a formality. Now, with three MVPs and one title on the resume, he is playing the market perfectly against himself.
The one wrinkle is roster construction. The Nuggets have to plan around what Jokic is or is not going to sign for. Every offseason move, every trade, every extension for a role player, has to account for a $75 million cap hit that is coming in 2027-28 whether Denver likes it or not.
Calvin Booth traded for Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in the 2023 title season. His replacement Ben Tenzer has spent the last year quietly retooling around Jokic’s timeline. Christian Braun took a step forward. Peyton Watson is developing. The pipeline is working.
Jokic’s decision to delay is actually the healthiest thing that could happen to the franchise. It buys Denver another season of financial flexibility before the biggest contract in league history kicks in. It also confirms in a very public way that the two-time defending Western Conference MVP has zero interest in exploring his options elsewhere.
The Nuggets are still the class of the West. Their franchise player is still committed to them. The only thing that changed this week is the size of the contract he wants when it comes time to write the final check.
Denver can live with that trade-off. Any team in the league would.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
