Denver Nuggets still believe current group can win an NBA title

The Denver Nuggets have only won five playoff games in the last two years, but that’s not stopping them from believing they can string together 16 straight and win a title in 2023.

At Friday’s season-ending press conference Nuggets President of Basketball Operations, Tim Connelly, reiterated the team’s goal behind their likely back-to-back MVP Nikola Jokic.

“If you’re not trying to win a championship then we’re in the wrong job,” he said. “I don’t think pressure is a bad thing. I also don’t think we’re in a zero-sum industry where if there are some great teams and great players who have not won at all, we don’t want to be one of those teams. We want to be one of the teams that finally brings championship here.”

The Denver Nuggets have never won a title or even been to the NBA Finals. Early in the franchise’s history, they reached the ABA Finals, but the closest they’ve come since merging into the NBA was two seasons ago when they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Final.

“I think if we don’t have self-induced pressure. if we’re not self-motivated to try to be one of those teams, then I’m in the wrong seat, and I’m not doing my job,” Connelly said. “You know that that group in there (the Nuggets locker room) thinks they’re a championship level team when healthy. I think we have a championship-level coaching staff.”

The last even semi-healthy Nuggets team did make that deep run before falling to the eventual champion Lakers. While it’s been some time since that team took the floor and many teams around the west are better, the Nuggets remain young.

“I think everybody knows you know how good this team can be in my opinion,” Michael Porter Jr. said Friday. “We can be the best team in the NBA when we have everybody healthy but it’s a long season and things happen. The teams that are all the way healthy come playoff time are very lucky, like the Warriors.”

When healthy, Porter is one of the league’s best shooters and is a valued rebounder to the Nuggets; Porter was limited to nine games in 2021-22, suffering from a back injury. He had season-ending surgery just a few weeks into the year. And the team was already without star guard Jamal Murray.

“The goal is to be healthy, but I think when we are healthy that we can be the best team in the NBA and I think that we have championship in our future,” Porter said.

Porter’s big boss in the Kroenkes just won a Super Bowl with the Rams, and Connelly references that, plus the Avs as Stanley Cup favorites, as reasons he feels ownership is positioning the Nuggets well.

“We have an ownership group that understands what it takes to achieve that level of success,” he said. “So I think it’s fun. I think the pressure has a bit of a negative connotation like it’s more the challenge of such and you know; hopefully, we can do that sooner rather than later because the city certainly deserves it.”

Connelly talked about the West being wide open without one dominant team but said the conference may be better than it has ever been.

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