The snippet of Josh Kroenke’s news conference that received the most online attention Tuesday was probably one of the most trivial.
Still, it was predictable enough that an unprompted comment invoking the possibility of a Nikola Jokic trade would go viral.
The context: Kroenke was answering a question about the NBA’s second tax apron during an introductory presser for the Nuggets’ new leadership duo in the front office, Ben Tenzer and Jon Wallace. The second apron is a child of the league’s 2-year-old collective bargaining agreement, imposing competitive and financial penalties on teams that pay their rosters more than a designated threshold. Next season, that threshold is $207.8 million.
Most team owners are ducking and covering. When roster payrolls exceed that amount, tax payments to the league increase dramatically, future draft picks are eventually “frozen,” and trading for a player becomes a near-impossibility. Nobody seems to want any part of it, including the Nuggets, who didn’t retain starting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope last offseason in free agency. Matching the contract offer he received the Orlando Magic would have required going into the second apron.
“It was a fascinating one, because we really did every exercise looking through retaining him and what that meant under the new rules,” Kroenke was saying. “And I think that for us as an organization, going into that second apron is not necessarily something that we’re scared of.”
Then the KSE vice chairman steered his comments in the direction of Jokic.
“I think there are rules around (the second apron) that we needed to be very careful of (last year) with our injury history,” he said. “The wrong person gets injured, and very quickly you’re into a scenario that I never want to have to contemplate, and that’s trading No. 15.”
The very insinuation that trading Jokic might ever be plausible caused a mini-panic among fans on social media. Jokic has been named the league’s MVP three times in the last five years, while leading the Nuggets to their first NBA championship and cementing himself as one of the greatest athletes in Denver sports history. He just turned 30 in February.
But the quote was in no way an indication that Denver plans to someday trade Jokic, of course. If anything, it might have been a thinly veiled self-contradiction of the previous statement that team ownership is not scared of the second apron.
The subtext seemed to be that Denver is theoretically willing to enter the second apron if a roster is ever good enough to warrant it — but the current roster features a high degree of injury risk, meaning there is very little certainty of the penalties being justified. Jamal Murray has torn an ACL. Michael Porter Jr. has been through three back surgeries. Aaron Gordon suffered calf and hamstring strains last season.
If Jokic’s future in Denver is in question at all, there’s also this: In the same news conference Tuesday, Kroenke also addressed the star center becoming eligible for a new contract extension on July 8, even though he still has two years (and a player option for a third) remaining on his current deal.
“We’re definitely going to offer it. I’m not sure if he’s going to accept it or not, because we’re also going to explain every financial parameter around him signing now versus signing later,” Kroenke said, alluding to the fact that Jokic will be eligible to sign for more money next summer if he prefers to wait. “To be completely transparent, that’s the way we always are. And then he makes the best decision for himself and his family, and we’ll support him in it.”
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