24 Storylines: Nuggets counting on young talent

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We’re counting down 24 key storylines heading into the 2024-25 NBA season. Our senior analysts will dissect a new topic each day as we help you get ready for opening night on Oct. 22.
Here is storyline No. 7:
Can Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets get enough out of their young players to make another title run? 
As long as Jokic stays healthy, then yes, the Nuggets can make another attempt. But another championship run?
They’ll need more than him.
They’ll need either Julian Strawther or Christian Braun to make a run at the Most Improved Player Award first. Because in the two years since the Nuggets raised the championship trophy, they’ve lost the battle of attrition, to the point where they’re rather ordinary beyond their starting five.
And if one of the starters endures an injury or slump — hello Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. — the Nuggets are vulnerable even if Jokic is at the top of his game.
After winning the 2023 ring, Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope chased the money. And the money wasn’t available in Denver because the Nuggets, flirting with serious tax issues, couldn’t afford to keep them from fleeing in free agency in back-to-back summers. There’s so much cash tied up in Jokic, Porter and now Murray and you can’t pay everyone. 
The punitive salary cap was re-designed to discourage teams from stocking up talent and titles. So the best way for championship teams like the Nuggets (and the Bucks a few years before) to keep it rolling in the right direction is to develop young and cheap talent on the roster … and pray.
Braun seemed most likely to improve and replace the production of Brown and Caldwell-Pope but the process has been a bit slow. Braun owns the athletic tools; he just needs more consistency and, frankly, show more talent. Maybe he gets there this season, maybe he’ll never be That Guy.
Strawther has shown flashes but until he matures and strings together a bigger body of work, those flashes are teases.
Are there other issues? Well, yes: Porter struggled mightily in the playoffs last season and at one point was unplayable because he couldn’t hit a shot. That must change; the Nuggets have too much invested in him. 
Same for Murray. He tailed off the last few months of the season and, aside from hitting the Game 2 winner against the Lakers in the first round, was mostly missing in the playoffs. The Nuggets maxed him out contractually anyway this summer.
Ultimately, championship teams reach the end of their run, no matter how brief or lengthy, and begin to pay the bill for the championship(s). Keeping a team fresh and contending is hard, and getting harder. The Nuggets’ front office hasn’t kept up the pace the last two summers and maybe that was asking too much.
You wonder if Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo, former MVPs with a solo ring in the last few years, are asking each other: Is that all?
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