The Denver Nuggets have matched the Oklahoma City Thunder’s fully guaranteed 2 year, $12M offer sheet to restricted free agent forward Spencer Jones the team announced late Sunday night.
Originally signed as an undrafted free agent back in 2024, Jones appeared in 64 contests for the Nuggets last season, averaging 5.5 points, and 3.3 rebounds per game. However, matching the offer sheet comes at a significant cost to Denver, who will now see their projected tax penalty increase by $32M for the upcoming season.
As it stands, the Nuggets are the only NBA team currently sitting in the second apron of the league’s luxury tax system.
In total, Denver will now face $68M in penalties for the 2026-27 season, however they still have the ability to shed salary throughout the year via trades. Making matters worse still is the fact that the team has yet to come to a resolution with restricted free agent Peyton Watson who will be commanding a sizeable pay raise as well.
The 23 year old has drawn interest from several teams around the association including the Atlanta Hawks, Milwaukee Bucks, and Los Angeles Clippers. However, to date, he has not yet received an official offer sheet from any of those clubs. While Denver would have the right to match any offer sheet the dynamic small forward receives, it would throw them further into the depths of the luxury tax hierarchy, and carry an even larger tax bill for the Korenke Sports & Entertainment owned franchise.
Denver has had an interesting offseason to date, not in terms of the moves they’ve made, but rather the ones they haven’t. After finishing with a 54-28 record in 2025-26, the team was viewed as a dark horse contender to land LeBron James in free agency. However, after James chose to sign with the Philadelphia 76ers, many fans are up in arms about the direction of the team.
With superstar Nikola Jokic on the roster, the team remains a title contender no matter how you look at it. However, you would be hard pressed to argue that the team did anything to improve their chances this offseason.
First there was the rumoured Jaylen Brown for Jamal Murray trade which never materialized. Then there was the aforementioned failed LeBron courtship. Couple this with the team’s inability to come to terms with Watson, and now a minor mismanagement of assets in terms of Jones, and it’s obvious that Ben Tenzer and Jonathan Wallace can’t feel as though they’ve crushed the offseason.
Denver is a franchise with a generational superstar in his prime, who seem to be content with taking a step backwards (on paper) this offseason. Whether that’s because there are more moves to come, or because the front office has poorly miscalculated the free agent landscape in 2026 remains to be seen.
Photo: Grunn050. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.