Nuggets Fan Vote Reveals MVP, Future Stars and the Team's Most Chaotic Personalities
The Denver Nuggets delivered the goods on offense all season, but injuries to Aaron Gordon, Christian Braun and Peyton Watson combined with some slippage from an overburdened Nikola Jokić to produce the team's worst defensive work in almost a decade.
Jokić's statistical dominance persisted, and the Nuggets still bludgeoned opponents when he was on the floor. Perhaps more importantly, Jamal Murray stayed healthy all season, giving Denver hope in the minutes Jokić rested.
You helped us assess a Nuggets' season that featured some real ups and downs by handing out some hardware.
Who Is the Most Valuable Player?
1 of 10
Winner: Nikola Jokić
Jokić averaged more assists than his next two most setup-prone temamates combined. His 12.9 rebounds per game were also more than the averages of any two other Nuggets players put together. He led the NBA in both categories, which was a first, and he did that while averaging nearly 30.0 points per game.
Only four percent of you overthought this one by giving votes to Murray and Gordon over the Joker.
Who Is Most Underrated?
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Winner: Tim Hardaway Jr.
The principals here—Jokić, Gordon, Murray, Braun and Cam Johnson—were all well-known commodities. We needed to look a little deeper to find someone who wasn't properly credited for his contributions to Denver's success.
Tim Hardaway Jr. shot it well enough to warrant significant minutes over Braun, and his quick-trigger approach also sometimes made him more valuable than Johnson.
With apologies to Spencer Jones, whose hustle and defense earned the former two-way forward several starts and major minutes when Gordon was out of the lineup, THJ took this one home pretty easily.
Who Is the Best Athlete?
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Winner: Aaron Gordon
Unless touch, dexterity, soft hands and vision counted as athleticism (which...maybe they should have?), this was one award Jokić didn't have a great shot to win. Conventional run-and-jump athleticism isn't what makes him great.
Speed, bounce, power and agility were much larger parts of Watson's game, and Gordon, 30, still had enough of those abilities to warrant a mention here. Somewhat surprisingly, the veteran forward topped his much younger teammate to seize a narrow win.
Who Is Most Likely To Be a 1st-Time All-Star In the Next 5 Years?
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Winner: Peyton Watson
Murray finally broke through in his ninth NBA season by earning the first All-Star nod of his career, taking what would have been the easiest pick for this award out of consideration.
Watson's youth and major growth as an offensive weapon this season made him a logical pick, though Gordon is the better player at the moment. If you could guarantee decent health for the veteran forward, and if the Nuggets were to run up a dominant pre-All-Star record in one of the next few seasons, Gordon could get enough credit to slide into his first All-Star spot.
In the end, Watson earned a significant majority of your votes.
Who Has the Best Contract?
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Winner: Nikola Jokić
It's hard to overpay perennial MVP short-listers, so no analysis of good Nuggets' contracts would have been complete without mentioning Jokić, who has two more years after this one (player option in 2027-28) at $59 and $62.8 million.
Superstars come at a premium, though, and you all decided Jokić's high price was still a bargain.
On the cheaper side, Watson's current $4.4 million salary was tempting. But he's about to get paid in restricted free agency. Braun's extension kicks in next year, and it already feels like an overpay.
Who Has the Worst Contract?
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Winner: Zeke Nnaji
Murray's All-Star trip helped, but there was still a case that he's not the $50 million player his contract says he'll be through 2028-29. Braun's five-year, $125 million extension came to mind, even if it doesn't kick in until next season.
Ultimately, voters couldn't overlook Zeke Nnaji's deal, which will pay him $7.5 million next year with a player option for that same amount in 2027-28. That's effectively dead money for a player who hasn't been a rotation presence in a long time.
Who Is the Best Trash-Talker?
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Winner: Bruce Brown
Sensitivity to criticism is among Kevin Durant's defining characteristics, so it's hard to know if Bruce Brown really said anything all that bad when KD "crossed a line" in his response. Brown, though, self-identifies as someone you don't want to talk trash to. Maybe he really did provoke Durant.
All of Denver's other top players had moments of bravado, but relatively few of them are known for chirping at the opposition. Jokić probably gets the most mileage out of his choice comments, but he faced an uphill climb against Brown, who secured over three-quarters of the vote.
Who Is Most Likely To Have a Burner Account?
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Winner: Bruce Brown
If Jokić had a burner, it would involve him disparaging opposing harness-racing teams. He'd use it to subtly take shots at certain horses' stride lengths, or how one of them—let's just call him Cinnamon—tends to pull a little too much to the right.
That's pretty harmless, at least as far as it impacts the NBA community. It was also an unpersuasive hypothetical, as voters decided Brown was far more likely to carry his trash talk onto the internet.
Who Are You Taking With You Into the Zombie Apocalypse?
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Winner: Jonas Valanciunas
Scratches can transmit the zombie virus as well as bites, so Jokić was always a suspect choice. That guy spends every season covered in claw marks and clearly isn't built to avoid contact.
Brute strength won the day, as Jonas Valanciunas emerged with a victorious 39.0 percent of the vote. It's not hard to imagine him intimidating zombies with a particularly focused stare.
Brown, whose cowboy attire and fu man chu facial hair seem drawn directly from Woody Harrelson in Zombieland, didn't get nearly the vote share he deserved.
Who Is Most Likely To Be Playing Overseas In 2 Seasons?
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Winner: Jonas Valanciunas
Well, Nnaji's deal is up in two years. Plenty of Denver fans would probably prefer he just head overseas now to save time, but the expiration of his contract lines up cleanly with the hypothetical timeline in this category.
Valanciunas nearly left the US to play elsewhere this year, so he always had an edge in this category.
If "playing overseas" had included sports other than basketball, nobody should have ruled out Jokić calling it quits in the middle of his current max deal to focus on his horses in Serbia. It's understandable that Nuggets fans didn't even want to joke about that possibility, giving Jokić only four percent of the vote.
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