The Denver Nuggets attempted to trade for Luka Doncic on draft night in 2018 and were close to acquiring Jrue Holiday at the 2020 trade deadline, according to Mike Singer, formerly of the Denver Post and now director of intelligence and strategy for the Denver Nuggets. Nuggets. In an appearance on ESPN’s “The Hoop Collective with Brian Windhorst,” Singer discussed the two what-ifs, as details of both proposed trades appear in his upcoming biography of Denver’s franchise player, “Why So Serious?: The Untold Story of NBA Champion Nikola Jokic.”
Could the Nuggets really have paired Jokic with Doncic?
According to Singer, at least one person involved on the Denver side thought so.
“I don’t know, I wasn’t in the room, I wasn’t in the front office at the time,” Singer said. “All I know is that it was considered, explored, examined, and someone anonymously said, ‘For 30 seconds, we thought we had Luka.'”
Singer’s story is pretty simple: entering 2018 NBA DraftDenver had the 14th pick and was excited about both Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. They didn’t end up getting Gilgeous-Alexander, as the Los Angeles Clippers took him with the 11th pick. Doncic wasn’t even close to the Nuggets’ range, but they thought they had a chance to get him because “they knew [then-Sacramento Kings lead executive] “Vlade Divac wasn’t particularly keen on Luka Doncic and they tried to exploit him.”
Denver “had plans to pair Nikola Jokic with Luka Doncic,” Singer said, so he made a proposal: Gary Harris and two first-round picks for the second pick.
At the time, Harris was 23 years old and coming off a career year. In retrospect, it would have been one of the most lopsided trades in NBA history, but it would also have been better for the Kings than what they ended up doing with their pick. They drafted Marvin Bagley III, who had a difficult three-and-a-half-year tenure in Sacramento. Doncic ended up with the Dallas Mavericks via his trade to the Atlanta Hawks, and the Nuggets used their pick on Michael Porter Jr.
For years, Divac has denied that he had little confidence in Doncic and maintained that he thought Bagley was a better fit next to point guard De’Aaron Fox. “I like Luka,” Divac he told Zach Lowe, then of ESPN, in 2019“But we didn’t want to overload ourselves with players who…maybe don’t have exactly the same characteristics, but if you want to develop the guys you have, you have to make sure they have room to develop.” two months ago, in an interview with Index, a Croatian mediaDivac said he might have made the wrong decision, but he explained it the same way.
“I could have chosen Luka, but then I would have had to switch to Fox,” Divac told Index. translated by Dallas Hoops Journal.
Divac said he thought Fox could become a franchise player. Fox made the All-Star and All-NBA team in 2023, but he hasn’t become a perennial MVP candidate like Doncic.
“Time will tell if I was wrong,” Divac said. “As things stand now, it seems so, but I have faith in Fox that he will have a better career.”
What happened to the holidays?
According to Singer, Denver was “closer than anyone has ever known” to acquiring Holiday at the 2020 trade deadline.
Holiday was a member of the New Orleans Pelicans at the time. This was before the NBA shut down the 2019-20 season and restarted it at Walt Disney World due to COVID-19. In November 2020, before the 2020-21 season began, the Pelicans traded Holiday to the Milwaukee Bucks.
“The Jrue Holiday trade was very real,” Singer said, “and ultimately would have meant Aaron Gordon not coming to Denver.”
Singer said he gets the impression the Nuggets were closer to landing Holiday than Jokic.
“Someone told me that if there had been a little more time… it would have been done,” Singer said.
Before that trading deadline, Shams Charania, then of The Athletic, reported that Denver was interested in Holiday, but New Orleans’ asking price was high and Holiday did not want to be traded. Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix reported The same thing days later, adding that the Nuggets had made Harris “very available” and would include guard Malik Beasley in a deal, but would not waive Porter. Immediately after the deadline, The Athletic’s David Aldridge reported that Denver was “looking for some way to get” Holiday away from the Pelicans until the end, but couldn’t reach a deal.
The following offseason, before Holiday became a Buck, the Nuggets were once again a rumored destination according to multiple Departures. Singer wrote that November. that guard Monte Morris could be the key piece in a possible Christmas deal, and The Athletic’s John Hollinger wrote that they would probably have to give up three first-round picks.
The Pelicans ended up getting two first-round picks and two pick swaps from Milwaukee. Months later, before the 2021 trade deadline, Denver sent Harris, RJ Hampton and a first-round pick to the Orlando Magic in exchange for Gordon.
Holiday played a huge role in the Bucks’ 2021 championship victory, and he did the same for the 2024 champion Boston Celtics after Milwaukee let him go in the Damian Lillard deal. Gordon, meanwhile, was a big part of the Nuggets’ title run in 2023. In this context, the fact that Denver is supposedly “very close,” as Singer put it, to landing Holiday (and therefore getting out of Gordon’s mix) in 2020 qualifies as a sliding doors moment.
