Peyton Watson breaks silence on playoff absence, calls coverage a ‘smear campaign’

Peyton Watson was done letting others do the talking for him.

The former Denver forward appeared on fellow former Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr.’s Curious Mike podcast this week and addressed, for the first time in detail, his hamstring injury that kept him out of the playoffs, his contract negotiations this summer and what he called a “smear campaign on my name” that followed him out of Colorado.

Watson said he planned to play in the second round of the playoffs had the Nuggets advanced past Minnesota — and that the decision to sit was never about protecting his next contract.

“If we got to this second round, I was 100% planning on playing,” Watson said. “There was nobody in the world who could stop me from playing in the second round. I just wasn’t healthy enough to.”

This comes in contrast to rumors that Watson purposely sat with his wallet in mind instead of going out to play. Even his agent, Rich Paul of Klutch Sports, implied on his own podcast that he advised Watson to do that. But I’ve maintained throughout my reporting that Watson was not fully healthy for the postseason and he would’ve gained a lot in his coming contract had he been able to replicate one of his stellar winter performances on the biggest stage.

Watson went on to explain the timeline of the hamstring injury that ended his breakout season. He initially suffered a grade-two strain on Feb. 4 and said he felt the Nuggets’ training staff ramped up his rehab too quickly.

“Two or three weeks into my hamstring rehab, I was out there playing with the coaches and I just felt like a little tweak,” Watson said. “I felt like that was a minor setback that I didn’t really want to accept. But I felt like that was a little bit more, and it set my recovery back even to six weeks after that.”

Watson returned and played a handful of games before re-injuring the hamstring against Utah in game 77 of the regular season. An MRI revealed the same grade-two strain he suffered originally.

“I felt like if I would have maybe taken my time more from the jump and approached it more precautiously, me and the training staff, I felt like we could have gotten on top of it and I would have been good throughout the postseason,” Watson said. “But I feel like we kind of rushed it and we didn’t take the right approach.”

That’s a pointed critique of how Denver’s medical staff handled his injury — and it reframes the narrative that dominated the Nuggets’ first-round loss. Watson said the coaching staff pressured him about his return timeline during the playoffs.

“There was pressure from the team being like, when are you going to be healthy? When are you going to play again? Can you rush it? Speed up your process again,” Watson said. “And it was just one of those things where I just didn’t feel healthy. I probably felt like 75%, if that.”

Meanwhile the staff, via head coach David Adelman specifically called out the training staff after Game 6 in the Twin Cities.

Watson then addressed the clip of Paul discussing “protecting” Watson from playing hurt — a soundbite that fueled speculation Paul influenced Watson to sit.

“A lot of people took that out of context because they took from that that he was influencing me not to play even when I was healthy,” Watson said. “But that’s not the case. I wasn’t healthy. He was protecting me from myself cuz I was still considering playing to help the team out.”

Watson said Jokic, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon never once pressured him to return. “The message from the guys was always come back 100%. Get healthy,” Watson told Porter. “You held it down while we were injured. We’re going to hold it down for you.”

Gordon played through Game 7 of Round 2 in 2025 with a hamstring injury he would’ve normally sat on. He hasn’t been healthy for six weeks straight since. But he had already signed his big contract. The context of this is important, too — and the players know this.

The conversation then turned to what followed — the summer-long contract standoff that ended with Watson being traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a sign-and-trade for an unprotected first-round pick.

Watson called the media coverage of those negotiations a smear campaign.

“Stories were coming out — crazy things about me throughout the offseason and through during my negotiations — almost like a smear campaign on my name,” Watson said. “It’s just like an indictment on my character, which is even crazier.”

He specifically pushed back on leaked contract figures that circulated throughout the summer, saying his camp never put those numbers out.

“We’re not saying anything like this to anybody,” Watson said, as he got to referencing a report about wanting more money than his friend and teammate Christian Braun. “So when people are seeing that, it’s just like, this guy’s comparing himself to his teammates. This guy sat out the playoffs. And it’s just like all of these things are just a narrative that somebody’s putting out there that’s completely untrue.”

Watson signed a four-year, $88 million deal with Cleveland. He told Porter he’s put on 15 to 20 pounds this summer and is focused on proving he can be a “strong, strong, strong starter and option for a championship-contending level team.”

But the lasting takeaway from the interview is simpler than all of that: Watson believes the organization that developed him for four years let narratives — some of which he says were planted — define his exit.

“Anybody who knows Peyton Watson knows that the last thing that I am is a quitter,” Watson said. “I’ve never cheated the game ever one time. I’ve taken the hard road. I’ve taken no shortcuts in this.”

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