ESPN Has the Nuggets 18th in Its Three-Year Outlook. That Feels Harsh.

Eighteenth. That is where ESPN slotted Denver in its future NBA power rankings, a three-year outlook on a team that still has Nikola Jokic walking through the door every night. My honest first reaction to this Denver Nuggets future power rankings placement: it is less a verdict on Jokic than a verdict on everyone standing next to him.

Understand what a three-year projection actually measures. It is not who wins the next game or the next series. It rewards young cores, cost control, and a pile of future draft capital, and it charges rent on age curves and thin benches. A roster organized around one transcendent player in his early thirties is exactly the shape of team those models mark down, because the model is pricing the back end of the window while the fan is watching the front of it. Denver gets docked for the years three seasons out, then the number gets read as a statement about right now. Those are two different arguments.

Checked the almanac: this is the same franchise that swept the Lakers in the 2023 Western Conference finals and closed out Miami in five for the first title in Denver history, with Jokic taking Finals MVP. That is not ancient scripture. That is recent enough that most of the confetti is probably still in a hallway vent somewhere.

The fair counterpoint, and there is one, is that depth has been the standing Denver question for years now. A three-time MVP raises the floor higher than almost any player alive, but the supporting cast has to hold up in April and May, and projections built on roster flexibility are going to be skeptical of a team whose margin rests on one man's availability. That skepticism is not lazy. It is just narrow.

Here is the part the ranking underrates. Jokic wins with footwork, touch, and passing vision, and players who win that way tend to age like they are cheating. He never needed lift. You cannot take away what he was never borrowing.

What I am watching is simple: whether Denver's second tier grows into the job before the window narrows on its own. Everything else is spreadsheet weather.