The Nuggets have a pivotal trade deadline coming up.
The 2025 NBA trade deadline is quickly approaching as teams look to finalize deals to improve their rosters before Feb. 6. Contenders are looking to stack their rotations before the final stretch of the regular season and the playoffs while some of the teams at the bottom of the standings are making moves with an eye towards the future.
The Denver Nuggets are one team that has had a lot of trade buzz surrounding them. At the beginning of the season, when the Nuggets were struggling to stack wins together, the Nuggets were linked to a lot of different players in a possible trade involving Michael Porter Jr.
Since then, however, Denver ha started to play some of its best basketball. Michael Malone inserted Russell Westbrook into the starting lineup and kept Aaron Gordon on the bench when he came back from his calf injury, and the team is thriving as a result. Even with this recent success, the Nuggets could still look to make a move at the deadline.
Here are a pair of scenarios that would be disastrous for the Nuggets as they get ready to push towards another championship.
Flipping Michael Porter Jr. for Zach LaVine
Sam Navarro-Imagn Images
Nuggets receive: Zach LaVine, Talen Horton-Tucker
Bulls receive: Michael Porter Jr., Zeke Nnaji, 2028 pick swap
It’s looking less and less likely that the Nuggets will actually pull the trigger on a Porter deal, and talks between them and the Bulls on a possible swap for Zach LaVine have subsided in recent weeks. Denver’s recent play is a great example of why it would not be wise for it to move off of the sharpshooting wing at this time.
Porter’s shooting is a huge plus for this Nuggets team, but LaVine also provides that. That’s not the key skill that the Nuggets would be losing out on if they were to make this deal. Porter’s size and ability to play the three and the four is huge for this Nuggets defense and allows them to have the lineup flexibility to bring Gordon off the bench as they have been doing lately. Nikola Jokic is obviously going to eat a lot of minutes at center and he is not a rim protector, so having a big body with long arms like Porter as a help defender on the weak side has allowed them to survive on that side of the ball.
The Nuggets would get out of Nnaji’s contract with this deal, which is a big plus. However, that positive doesn’t outweigh the negative that losing Porter would be. LaVine is a better all-around scorer than Porter is and would give the Nuggets some more creation on the offensive end of the floor, but they would become very small and LaVine’s defensive liabilities would keep them out of contention.
Thunder swing deal for Cam Johnson
Thunder receive: Cam Johnson, 2026 second-round pick, 2027 second-round pick
Nets receive: Nikola Topic, Aaron Wiggins, 2025 first-round pick, 2027 first-round pick
The other nightmare scenario for the Nuggets is surrounding the Oklahoma City Thunder, who have been running laps around the rest of the Western Conference for the entire first half of the season.
It’s well-known that the Thunder have a ton of picks to work with, and they can now start moving them around and trying to add key pieces as they get ready to compete for a championship. Another wing who can provide value on both ends while also spacing the floor for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander would be the ideal fit, and Cam Johnson fits that mold perfectly.
Johnson is shooting almost 42% from 3-point range on more than seven attempts per game this season, so he has proven that he can get the job done from the outside. Adding him would give the Thunder a plug-and-play option in the starting lineup who can seamlessly slot in to any matchup in a playoff series, which would be awful news for the Nuggets.
Thankfully for Denver, this deal also looks to be losing steam as the deadline approaches. The Nuggets, like the rest of the Western Conference, seem to be far behind the Thunder as it stands, and it would take a massive effort to knock them off in a playoff series. That task would get even tougher if the Thunder were able to get Johnson, so this would be a disaster for the Nuggets if it went down at the deadline.