Aaron Gordon ejected as Nuggets’ horrid vibes continue

On Saturday, Nikola Jokic told the fans who booed that they weren't welcome anymore — on Monday, nobody booed the Denver Nuggets — plenty of fans just left

BY JAKE SHAPIRO

Oct 27, 2026, 12:35 AM

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Watch: Nikola Jokic fires back at Nuggets fans for booing. Did he go too far? | Shapiro and Piro | 27 mins

DENVER — The star player of the team is telling fans to get lost, the team’s biggest offseason splurge is pocket watching the mascot, the newly acquired future Hall-of-Famer is sending depressing social media posts and the fan favorite just got ejected from the second home game of the season.

On Saturday, Nikola Jokic told the fans who booed that they weren’t welcome anymore. On Monday, nobody booed. Plenty of them just left.

Golden State came to Ball Arena winless and without Jimmy Butler, Moses Moody and Kristaps Porzingis. The Warriors left with a 134-114 win that wasn’t as close as the score. Aaron Gordon was ejected with 8:34 left after two technical fouls. By the time the reserves took over with 3:33 to play, much of the crowd was already on Speer Boulevard.

It’s hard to pull a 10-alarm fire bell three games into October. The Nuggets are missing four rotation wings: Cameron Johnson, Alpha Diallo, Spencer Jones and Julian Strawther. That has pushed two rookies into the rotation. One of them, Bryce Hopkins, started and played 31 minutes.

“The effort is there,” Jokic said of Hopkins and Trevon Brazile. “You can see that they’re playing with a lot of energy, as they should.”

DeMar DeRozan put it in perspective.

“We got a lot of injuries. … We’re relying on a lot of young guys to learn the defense — that’s even new for me,” DeRozan said. “It’s tough to find that rhythm that we kind of had during training camp. Now we’re kind of all over the place trying to figure it out on the go. … It’ll be fine.”

He may be right. But context cuts both ways, and Nuggets fans know that context well. And it’s that very thing that has frustrations boiling over within the crowd and possibly on the floor.

This team is coming off their first first-round exit of the Jokic-Jamal Murray era with both healthy, after wilting against a banged-up Minnesota team. The Nuggets followed with an offseason our own preseason panel graded as low as an F. And the three-time MVP’s next contract isn’t signed.

The Nuggets came into the season with a thin margin for error. They’ve spent the first three games of the season showing their team might be outside of the margin of error.

The Nuggets have lost eight of the 12 quarters they’ve played. They scored 84 points in Oklahoma City. They needed a comeback that tied the biggest fourth-quarter rally in franchise history to beat a New Orleans team that’s now 0-3. And on Monday they gave up 134 to a Warriors team that came in 0-3.

Is Nuggets Nation grateful for Jokic? No question. Are fans still riding the high of the 2023 title? Absolutely. Many wouldn’t be fans without one or both.

But it’s plain to see there was more on the table than one banner, or even one trip to the Finals. Whether it was staff friction, roster decisions, ownership’s wallet, player disputes or coaching, a lot of that opportunity has spoiled. Now everyone is sniffing what’s left to see whether it has turned, too.

Monday’s verdict: It smells rotten.

Stephen Curry was perfect: 24 points on 8-of-8 shooting, 3 of 3 from deep and 5 of 5 at the line in 26 minutes. Seventeen of those came in the third quarter without a miss. Rookie Yaxel Lendeborg added 31 points and 12 rebounds, and Nuggets killer Brandin Podziemski was plus-33. The Warriors made 22 of 44 3-pointers and turned 13 offensive rebounds into 23 second-chance points.

It’s another reminder of how many of Denver’s moves have gone sideways. The Nuggets never lost to the Warriors with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on the roster. On Monday, Curry was untouched.

“It was a bad night in that way, in every way,” Adelman said. “I don’t care if our guys are rookies or whatever it is, or played the league for 15 years. You have to put your hands on people if you want to have a chance. We didn’t do that.”

The coach later made a point about the small guard stuff that has bothered Denver for years. The star player saw a similar issue.

“(Change) cannot happen overnight,” Jokic said. “It’s kind of hard to change your habits, and you really need to emphasize and kind of overdo it. In some situations, even if you don’t need to do it, you need to do it just to change your habits.”

Murray said Denver has relied on its offense as the “tone setter” for years, and that has to change.

“This year and a couple of recent years, we gotta focus on defense and the intent,” Murray said. “On defense, I think we just have to have a better awareness and just a little bit — not even effort, just more skill. Let’s go for the ball instead of playing position.”

Adelman was blunter: “Old, young or in between, it wasn’t good enough.”

Denver even led early. The Nuggets were up 32-28 after one quarter and trailed by just four at halftime. Then the Warriors won the third quarter 40-28 and stretched the lead to 24 in the fourth, and the night boiled over.

With Denver down 16, Christian Braun was called for an offensive foul, his fifth. Gordon picked up two technicals and was gone, finishing with seven points on 2-of-10 shooting.

“I thought Aaron was frustrated with the call,” Adelman said. “It just seemed like it was an inconsistent whistle in that moment.”

Murray pushed back when a reporter asked whether the Warriors simply played harder.

“It’s not that you decided to not play hard, brother,” Murray said. “They just won the game.”

The fans heading for the exits may see it differently. If nothing else, Gordon’s ejection showed that the frustration lives inside the locker room, too.

It isn’t limited to the court, either. Jones, who hasn’t played this season because of a hamstring injury and barely let out a smile during team intros on Saturday, posted on Twitter on Monday:

“Nothing humbles you faster than realizing your team’s mascot makes more than your rookie contract,” Jones wrote. “Rocky makes ∼$600k a year doing backward half-court shots. I was on a two-way deal bringing home the exact same base salary. After taxes and fees, I’m pretty sure the mountain lion had me beat.”

The mountain lion didn’t. That $600,000 figure is an urban legend. According to court filings reported by Denver Sports, the longtime performer behind Rocky earned a $70,000 base salary plus $15,000 to $20,000 a year in appearance fees.

Jones was joking, and a former two-way player poking fun at his old paycheck is relatable. But Jones is now the Nuggets’ highest-paid bench player who is supposed to actually contribute. The post landed during a week when patience in Denver is running thin and his offseason offer sheet with one of the biggest rivals still eats at fans. Business? Sure. But nobody in Nuggets Nation is more beloved than Rocky is going to bug fans.

DeRozan drew attention off the court, too, with a dark message on Twitter on Sunday that had fans hoping he’s OK. He has been open about his mental health for years, and that matters more than any box score. On Monday, he was one of the few things that worked: 21 points on 7-of-15 shooting.

“Those guys create so much attention,” DeRozan said of Jokic and Murray. “Anything they do make my job easier, and vice versa.”

Then there’s Jokic. He finished with 19 points, seven rebounds and 11 assists but went 1 of 6 from 3-point range and is 5 of 23 from deep this season. Adelman said he sees nothing mechanically wrong, but he wants his star, and everyone else, to shoot when they’re open.

“Our guys have to shoot the ball when they’re open,” Adelman said. “They have to, whether that’s your game or not.”

Jokic’s triples not falling happens but the Nuggets lacking shooters goes back to other choices they’ve made — trading MPJ, letting KCP and THJ walk. Everyone packs the paint on Denver because the Nuggets lack the shooters they’ve jettisoned.

So when they’re down, like they’ve been many a time before, a comeback isn’t as easy because they struggle to hit triples. Fans know this. Based on Jokic’s comments Saturday, the players may be too confident to see it.

It plays out like it did on Monday, as it has a few times lately. The Nuggets have now lost by 20 or more at home four times in 2026. From 2020 through 2025, they did it at Ball Arena only eight times total.

The Nuggets are not dead. There are reasons to believe but they are shrinking as the bad vibes that go all the way back to the post-championship two-year meltdown continue to permeate. Call it a culture issue — the self appointed chief culture officer and voice of ownership Josh Kroenke was not seen by me at Ball Arena on Monday. He’s got a lot to do — even more than before when he basically said he would never let what happened to the 2025 Nuggets happen again.

There’s a real signs some of that disease still exists in the once great Nuggets culture built step by step. It’s hard to say if that’s because ownership signed off on letting Adelman have another go at it is the reason or if — worse — the Nuggets just don’t have the talent anymore. But watching on Monday, again, it was seemed like Mr. Nugget and Nuggets Nation cared more about the product than what many folks actually on the floor showed.

So back to the fans, who have been called out by Jokic.

“I’m sticking to what I said,” Jokic said on Monday about his viral booing comments on Saturday.

“I never heard that (before,)” he said. “I don’t think they are real fans.”

The real fans didn’t boo on Monday, they left before the buzzer.

That’s worse.

What’s next for the Nuggets?

They travel to face the winless Pelicans on Wednesday then begin NBA Cup play in Phoenix on Friday.

“Teams are just playing with a lot of desperation, playing with a lot of thrust, playing with a lot of physicality downhill,” Murray said of the coming games. “And we’ve been good at times, but like I said, we just got to be more consistent throughout the lineup in giving it back.”