Nuggets owner Josh Kroenke raised plenty of eyebrows on Tuesday by outlining a worst-case scenario where Nikola Jokic could be traded, but ESPN insider Brian Windhorst thinks Denver fans have no reason to be concerned.
“They are not going to trade Nikola Jokic,” Windhorst said on ESPN’s “Get Up” Wednesday morning.
Kroenke brought up the possibility of a Jokic trade, unprompted, while discussing the second tax apron and the issues it could present for the Nuggets during a press conference.
“For us, as an organization, going into that second apron is not necessarily something that we’re scared of,” Kroenke said. “I think there are rules around it that we need to be very careful of with our injury history. The wrong person gets injured, and very quickly, you’re in the scenario that I never want to have to contemplate, and that’s trading No. 15 [Jokic]. We’re very conscious of that pushing forward.”
Windhorst pushed back on the idea that Kroenke and the Nuggets are “not scared” of the second apron, but he said the franchise’s greater concern should be with retaining role players, not a potential Jokic trade.
“[Kroenke] says ‘I’m not afraid of [the second apron], we’re not scared of it.’ I actually think that he is because he says this is what could happen. … The reason that the Nuggets have not been able to get back to the Finals the last two years [is that] their team has not been as good because they have not been able to retain role players because they are afraid of the second apron.”
The second apron is a financial threshold in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement, and teams that cross it must face several serious competitive and financial penalties.
With its current roster construction, Denver is approaching the second apron threshold, which will be $207.8 next season.
Last offseason, the Nuggets chose not to re-sign Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in order to remain under the second apron – a prime example of Windhorst’s point.
But trading Jokic? Windhorst appears confident that that’s fully off the table.
