It’s finally here Denver Nuggets fans! With media day today, the 2025-2026 NBA season has begun. It is one of the most anticipated seasons in Nuggets franchise history and after a much ballyhooed offseason fans expect nothing less than a championship. Those types of expectations are going to put pressure on everyone but there’s some players with more pressure than others. Lets take a look at the five players with the most to prove this season.
5 – Zeke Nnaji
As of last season Zeke is officially on his $8 million per year contract. I want to take a moment to remind everyone that $8 million per year is not big money in the NBA, it’s in fact taxpayer MLE money. So, think Reggie Jackson, Dario Saric type production. No one should expect much from Zeke based on his pay alone. Still, even taxpayer MLE players are generally expected to contribute regularly to the team (Saric aside). Thus far, Zeke has been unable to secure that opportunity. He comes into this season perhaps more on the outside looking into the rotation than ever and each season he is unable to crack the rotation is another year closer to the end of his guaranteed contract.
That contract is now getting cheaper ($8.1 million this season, $7.5 in the following two) and becoming easier to swallow for interested trade partners. While a change of scenery may actually be what Nnaji needs, if he wants to do it on his terms he’s running out of time to make that change on anything other than a veteran minimum contract. Still guaranteed for three more seasons though so he barely cracks or list at number 5.
4 – Cam Johnson
Denver’s newly acquired starter comes into the season with a decent amount of pressure on him to perform. The difference from other players on the list though is Cam’s pressure is almost entirely generated by noise and not actual performance on the court. The expectations for him to not only outperform Michael Porter Jr., the starter he’s replacing, but also be the key roster change to help take the Nuggets back to the NBA Finals were there the moment the trade was announced. Even when Johnson made the Finals with the Phoenix Suns in 2021 he’s didn’t have expectations on him and his team like he does now.
On top of success, Johnson has something to prove on the health front as well. Ironically, Porter, a player with a much maligned health history, has proven to be the far more healthier player over the past few seasons. Johnson has not played over sixty games in a season since ’21/’22, he’s never played over seventy. Nothing could derail the new found optimism in Denver faster than injuries. One of the biggest things that Johnson must do, and MPJ did (albeit inconsistently at times), is lighten the load offensively on the rest of the starters. In order to do that he must be healthy.
3 – Jalen Pickett
The Nuggets have yet to sign a fifteenth man to their roster. Likewise, they’ve yet to sign a third true point guard. Jamal Murray will obviously lead the starting unit from the one, but the reserve point guard is wholly undetermined at this point, so it appears that Pickett is in the pole position for that rotation spot. However, it shouldn’t be characterized as the Nuggets turning over the second unit reins to the young guard. With the return of Bruce Brown Denver’s already got a proven option as a combo guard off the bench. If Pickett is truly going to crack the rotation he’s going to have to earn it in training camp, preseason and early regular season.
2 – Bruce Brown
It’s not been a great ride for Bruce since he left the Nuggets. After securing the bag with the Indiana Pacers, he got added into the Pascal Siakam trade and sent to Toronto where he never found his footing. After being traded last season again, this time to the New Orleans Pelicans, Bruce found himself signing a veteran minimum with Denver the second fee agency opened this Summer.
Fit and health have been the issues for Brown since he left and there’s no better place to fix that than in Denver (the fit part at least), but he’s going to have to rediscover that magic. The Nuggets remain thin on their bench in terms of playmakers and scorers, particularly so if Bruce can’t recreate his 2022/2023 form. Without that depth Denver will be in danger of running into the same problems with bench production that they did last season and Bruce will be coming precariously close to falling out of the league..
1 – Jamal Murray
Once again the pressure on Denver’s number two guy will be immense. Murray has yet to put together an All Star campaign in the NBA and had a slow start to the season last year which is a too common occurrence. There were whispers (read: subtle jabs from Calvin Booth) that Jamal’s conditioning was subpar coming into the season and whether true or not his slow start and nagging injuries made that perception a reality.
In the past, Murray’s underwhelming regular seasons could be overlooked if the playoff performance he’s so well known for was there but two years in a row that hasn’t been enough. Additionally, one of the biggest criticisms of the Nuggets has been that Nikola Jokic is asked to make a Herculean effort night in and night out to carry the team to their lofty expectations, leaving his tank near empty come postseason. While that may not matter all that much because Jokic is the best basketball player on earth and always finds a way to perform, everyone will agree that not needing him to do so much is a good thing, particularly on the scoring front. No one is better positioned to make that happen this year than Jamal.
