The Number That Makes Valanciunas's Departure a Five-Alarm Problem: 8%

Start with the depth chart, not the departure announcement. When Jonas Valanciunas signed his two-year deal with Zalgiris Kaunas last week, the headline wrote itself—14 NBA seasons, a Lithuanian homecoming, a feel-good story. What the headline buried was a single figure from Denver's positional production breakdown: Valanciunas accounted for 8% of center production on this roster. Jokic accounted for 92%. There is no third entry. That is not a depth chart. That is a tightrope with one performer and no net.

The production gap between Jokic and whoever comes next is quantified at 51 points—and the current backup option sits at roughly 20% of league-median starter output. To put that in plain terms: Denver's fallback at center, right now, is not a rotation player on most playoff rosters. It is a body. The Nuggets finished 55-28 and won ten straight to close the regular season, so the vibe heading into this offseason was one of a contender taking stock. The number at the center position says something different. It says the roster was already operating with a structural fragility that Valanciunas—imperfect as he was—was papering over.

And Valanciunas was imperfect. I noted this in my piece earlier this week on Denver's efficiency collapse: in the final ten games of the regular season, his shot attempts jumped from 6.8 to 9.9 per game while his field goal percentage cratered from 61.8% to 51.5%—a 10.3-point drop. His minutes climbed 29% to 22.3 per game in that stretch. The coaching staff leaned on him harder as the season crescendoed, and he bent under the weight. That efficiency erosion was a warning sign about what happens when Denver needs its backup center to actually be a backup center rather than a spot-minute role player. The answer, last season, was: not much. Now Denver must replace even that.

The reason this connects directly to the first-round collapse is not incidental. Jokic played 34.5 minutes per game across 75 regular-season games—a significant load for a player who is the offensive engine, the primary playmaker, and the defensive anchor simultaneously. When Minnesota made the series competitive, Denver had no credible way to give him rest without surrendering the paint entirely. The Nuggets went 16-13 in clutch games—55% against 66% everywhere else, an 11-point gap in close-game execution that I've been flagging since the playoffs ended. Some of that is late-game decision-making. Some of it is fatigue. And fatigue is directly downstream of minutes load, which is directly downstream of having no one behind Jokic who can hold the position without the offense collapsing.

Here is the arithmetic of the problem as training camp approaches: Jokic has deferred his extension until summer 2027, which signals commitment but not complacency—he is watching how this organization responds to an obvious need. The wing rotation carries its own health uncertainty with Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson both dealing with day-to-day situations. And the highest-priority roster need, by the front office's own construction, is the center position—a need that was already rated high before Valanciunas boarded a flight to Kaunas. My read is that this is the single move that will define whether Denver's 55-win core takes a step forward or spends another season grinding Jokic into the ground and hoping the playoffs break right. The vibe says contender. The depth chart at center says something considerably more precarious.