Jamal Murray has emerged as a central name in an offseason of what-ifs for the Denver Nuggets, with multiple reports suggesting the club is open to moving pieces to reshape the roster around Nikola Jokic.
The chatter ran from a Sports Illustrated scenario that framed Jokic as the only untouchable on Denver’s roster and proposed swapping Murray for Kyrie Irving plus extra assets, to a Denver Post assessment that said Murray and Aaron Gordon could not be ruled out of trade rumors this offseason.
The weight of the debate rests on a few clear facts. The Denver Post wrote that “Murray was (in the opinion of this All-NBA voter) comfortably one of the 10 best players in the league this regular season.” Sports Illustrated described Jokic, a three-time MVP, as the only safe player on the roster. On the other side of a potential swap, the SI piece pointed to Kyrie Irving—who is a nine-time All-Star—but noted Irving did not play at all in the 2025-26 season because of a torn ACL and has not topped 60 games in a season since 2018-19. The contrast deepens when looking at Irving’s most recent full campaign: in the 2024-25 season he averaged 24.7 points, 4.8 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 1.3 steals while shooting 47.3 percent from the field, 40.1 percent from three and 91.6 percent from the line.
Context matters. The Denver Post said the organization is seeking salary relief and new hope for the team’s future around Jokic, and identified Murray, Gordon and Cam Johnson as the primary candidates who could fetch reasonably positive value. The same report warned that Murray and Gordon are both 29 or older, have unfortunate injury histories and carry long-term commitments on their contracts. The paper also sketched a league-wide puzzle: many possible deals could require three or more teams because of salary-matching complications.
That creates a tension at the heart of the story. On paper, a swap that replaces Murray’s scoring with Irving’s proven efficiency seems tidy—Irving’s 2024-25 numbers are elite—but his ACL absence last season and recent durability concerns make any straight one-for-one logic fragile. Meanwhile, Murray’s standing as a top-10 regular-season performer, per the Denver Post voter, collides with Denver’s explicit desire for salary relief and the reality that both he and Gordon are in their late 20s with injury histories and long-term deals that complicate trade math.
Peripheral threads from the Denver Post underline how intricate a solution must be. The paper noted Houston’s Fred VanVleet is set to return from a torn ACL after the Rockets went an entire year without a true point guard; Toronto’s Scottie Barnes needs offensive help after a low-scoring first-round series; and Atlanta’s late-game offense this postseason ran through CJ McCollum. Those cross-currents suggest Denver has potential partners but that most workable exchanges will be multi-team affairs.
Given the constraints the facts establish, the most likely outcome is not a single blockbuster that neatly swaps one star for another. Instead, Denver appears positioned to pursue complex, multi-team maneuvers that thread salary relief, injury risk and immediate competitiveness together while keeping Jokic as the franchise fulcrum. How the Nuggets balance all of that—whether by moving jamal murray for draft capital and salary flexibility, packaging him in a three-team deal to land a veteran scorer, or holding him as a core complement to Jokic—will determine whether this offseason is a genuine reset or a rerun of the same dilemma.
