Was a healthy Nuggets roster closer to contention than anyone realized?

The Denver Nuggets are heading into the 2025-26 season with a lot of the same names and a lot of the same questions. After watching a much-discussed pursuit of Jaylen Brown never materialize into a completed deal, this kind of offseason feels like a missed opportunity.

Digging a little deeper, however, might reveal a picture that isn’t quite as bleak as the transaction log suggests.

On a recent edition of “Stokley and Evans, with Mark Schlereth” on 104.3 The Fan, Schlereth reframed the entire conversation around a single variable that has been underweighted in the analysis of Denver’s season, health.

The Nuggets weren’t the version of themselves anyone expected to see for large stretches of last year. Nikola Jokic missed a chunk of the season with an injury that sidelined him for 16 games. Aaron Gordon battled physical issues that lingered into the postseason. Peyton Watson wasn’t always available in the role Denver needed him to fill off the bench. And the ripple effects of those absences reshaped the rotation in ways that never fully stabilized. By the time the playoffs arrived, the roster the Nuggets fielded looked like a shell of the roster the front office had envisioned back in October.

That’s the context Schlereth wants the fan base to hold onto as it evaluates the state of the team heading into next season.

“Are you good enough if you have a healthy Aaron Gordon? Are you good enough if you have a healthy Peyton Watson off the bench? Would you have been good enough to compete with San Antonio and with the Thunder?” Schlereth asked.

Those three questions cut right to the center of the matter. A healthy Gordon changes the defensive profile of the team entirely. He is the piece capable of guarding Victor Wembanyama, Chet Holmgren and the modern breed of skilled bigs that now dominate the Western Conference. A healthy Watson provides the two-way athleticism off the bench that Denver’s second unit has lacked for years. And a healthy Jokic, freed from having to carry undermanned lineups, is the version of the best player in the world that the rest of the league genuinely fears.

Schlereth made clear where the internal consensus already sits on one of those names.

“I think we’re all in agreement about the value and the importance of Aaron Gordon,” he said.

Gordon has been the connective tissue of this roster for years, the versatile defender, the lob threat, the veteran who quietly does the little things that don’t show up in box scores but decide playoff series. When he is right, the Nuggets have a defensive floor that most contenders in the Western Conference simply can’t match. When he isn’t, the entire structure of the team wobbles.

None of that changes the challenges the Nuggets face in a loaded Western Conference. Oklahoma City and San Antonio aren’t going anywhere. But Schlereth’s point stands. Before the fan base writes this roster off, it deserves at least one healthy run at the season to prove what it actually is. Running it back isn’t necessarily surrender. Sometimes it’s just an honest bet that health, more than talent, was the real problem.

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