![]() One of them was Kristaps Porzingis, a player whose stardom was apparent well in advance. Only two other European players were drafted in the first round in 2015. In his final season in Europe, he averaged over 19 points and 11 assists against Serbian opponents. Had Jokic held firm, he would've been drafted a whole lot higher in 2015. The Nuggets convinced him to change his mind. So with 10 days before the draft, Jokic's agent decided to pull him out of the 2014 NBA Draft. I remember he hit a couple 3s in a row, a great post-up player." "From playing in Europe, he was kind of doing everything already. "He's never been (athletic)," Clint Capela, another attendee of the 2014 Hoops Summit, joked to the Denver Post's Mike Singer in 2019. But he scored an invite to the 2014 Nike Hoops Summit in Portland, and he made the most of it. Nothing about Nikola Jokic's 2013-14 Adriatic League stats screamed "future NBA MVP." In his second season playing for KK Mega Basket, Jokic couldn't reach 12 points or four assists per game. ![]() ![]() Let's take a trip down memory lane and look back on the moves that made the Nuggets Western Conference champions. But how did they get here? How did the Nuggets build a roster as unconventional as it is dominant? Facing the eighth-seeded Miami Heat, they're heavily favored to win their first title, and with a relatively young core, they figure to be in the championship mix for years to come. Now the Nuggets are in the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history. In 2018, LeBron James didn't even grant them a meeting. The closest they ever came to adding a veteran star was a brief meeting with Dwyane Wade all the way back in 2016. Nikola Jokic is the only player in their rotation to have ever reached an All-Star Game. Their best player was so unremarkable as an amateur prospect that the Nuggets drafted him during a Taco Bell commercial in the second round. The 2023 Denver Nuggets defied just about every roster-building convention to reach the NBA Finals.
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