Nuggets Journal: How close was Denver to Thunder’s championship level? Josh Kroenke weighs in.

Josh Kroenke is just like any other sports fan When the dust settles from a seven-game series who doesn t love pondering what would ve could ve should ve been The hypotheticals are more nuanced this year It was all soberingly simple in In a series of blowouts the Nuggets would ve advanced past Minnesota if they had just protected that -point lead in Encounter There were no other distinct moments that swung the outcome Just one unambiguous collapse As for Denver s fresh-on-the-mind loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in seven games Kroenke understands how easy it is to manipulate the what-ifs Took a great squad to seven games the Nuggets president revealed That series could have been - the other way That series could have been - us Accurate To put a finer point on it If Aaron Gordon a career outside shooter misses a -pointer at the end of Match and a -pointer at the end of Competition Denver loses both Two missed shots away from a Thunder sweep Or if the Nuggets hold onto their eight-point leads in the fourth quarters of Games and they re in the Western Conference Finals I don t think we lost Match during Championship Kroenke disclosed I thought we lost Battle during Games and These series are very fragile things and they come down to little moments in time Certain actions over the lesson of a few-minute span in games While I think we were close in certain strategies I don t think it was a - sweep for Oklahoma City and I don t think it was a - win for us And that s where the series wound up Two stingers for both teams And in the end presumably a fair outcome If this all sounds like a pointless conversation you ve had with a friend over beers this week well it sort of is Except that Kroenke s opinion is more essential than yours respectfully His ruminations factor into the billion-dollar question that can dictate how teams make offseason decisions how they assess their future How close are the Nuggets It s a question that Kroenke has solicited myself in about different tactics If Oklahoma City steamrolls its remaining competition and raises a banner what does that say about the Nuggets Was their ability to deal punches with a juggernaut for seven games a validation of championship mettle A suggestion to stay the program and avoid drastic change Or was it fool s gold Was the OKC sweep a more realistic conclusion than Denver prevailing in any number of games Maybe those are chosen of the avenues Kroenke has urged it We re close But I don t want to be naive in thinking of how close we are he commented But I don t want to underestimate how close we were either Shoot thinking back to the first round we re an Aaron Gordon tip-dunk away from perhaps coming back here down - to the Clippers And then what does that series look like Do we even have the opportunity to go out and try to chase a band as great as the Thunder I think as a group we feel confident that we can go toe-to-toe with a lot of teams around the league And now we re gonna get to work seeing about how we can go toe-to-toe and then overtake them Kroenke made another sneakily astute point during his end-of-season news conference this week one that almost contradicts his general sentiment that Denver s answers are internal It s Kroenke s belief that the current championship window opened not in with the association s first championship but in with the acquisition of Gordon Five games later Jamal Murray tore his ACL causing him to miss two playoff runs That would mean the Nuggets have played five postseasons as a contender Two of them were spoiled by Murray s absence one of them resulted in a championship and the other two ended in second-round Tournament s Related Articles Gilgeous-Alexander Jokic Antetokounmpo Tatum Mitchell All-NBA st gang LeBron is nd band Revealing my All-NBA awards ballot Who made first club with Nikola Jokic Renck File David Adelman s new Nuggets job is a lot harder than his old one Renck Next year s Nuggets could look a lot like this year s And that s wasting Nikola Jokic s prime Does Josh Kroenke want to run it back with current Nuggets roster A lot of our answers are internal That would mean logically there are fewer years left of this Getting close is informative But it will become increasingly dissatisfying every year after this I am proud to say I thought we squeezed a little more out of the season than the direction we were headed six weeks ago Kroenke commented But when you have the roster that we have anything outside of a championship is not acceptable Want more Nuggets news Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis