Report: After Lakers discarded Russ, some within Nuggets believed their ‘quiet’ group needed someone like him

The Denver Nuggets signed guard Russell Westbrook to a two-year deal in the 2024 offseason, and the decision to add the nine-time All-Star to the fold has helped them make a run this postseason, even though his stint has had its fair share of ups and downs.

Westbrook has been one of the top reserves in the 2025 NBA Playoffs thus far, as across 10 games played (and zero starts), he’s averaging 13.4 points, 3.6 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.1 steals per contest.

The Nuggets reportedly considered acquiring Westbrook well before he joined the team last offseason. According to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Denver weighed signing him after the Los Angeles Lakers traded him in early 2023 to the Utah Jazz, who quickly bought him out.

“They had talked about signing him after the Los Angeles Lakers discarded him in a February 2023 trade to the Utah Jazz, where he was promptly bought out,” Shelburne wrote. “And there were those in the Nuggets organization who, sources told ESPN, believed their group of hard-working, enormously skilled, yet somewhat quiet group of players needed someone, with ‘some spice,’ as team president Josh Kroenke recently described Westbrook, to get over the playoff hump they kept crashing into.

“No one in the league can bring the type of energy to his teams that Westbrook does. But it’s nearly impossible to harness.

“But the idea was still enticing enough to the Nuggets back then because [Nikola] Jokic, who they believed was the best player in the world, was squarely in his prime, and they knew the window to win an NBA championship closes a lot faster if you keep bumping up against the same walls.

“Ultimately, the Nuggets decided against it, sources said, because they worried Westbrook would destabilize the locker room and undercut the confidence of point guard Jamal Murray.”

In the end, the Nuggets didn’t need to acquire Westbrook in early 2023 to get over the hump in the playoffs, as they won that year’s title in decisive fashion without him on the roster.

Jokic, Murray and company guided the Nuggets to their first title in franchise history, and the Nuggets weren’t really tested in the 2023 NBA Playoffs. The Phoenix Suns were the only one of the Nuggets’ four playoff opponents to force a Game 6.

Fast forward to current day, and the Nuggets are hoping that Westbrook can help them win their second NBA title in the last three seasons. The Nuggets are in a highly competitive second-round series against the West’s No. 1 seed in the Oklahoma City Thunder, as each team has two wins ahead of Tuesday’s pivotal Game 5.

Westbrook himself is also looking to win his first title as an NBA player. He’s played in the NBA Finals just once in his career, and ironically, that was back when he was a member of the same team he’s facing off against right now in the Thunder. With him and forward Kevin Durant as the team’s pillars, OKC reached the 2012 NBA Finals, where it lost to the Miami Heat in five games.

Hopefully, Westbrook will finally add a championship ring to his highly impressive resume in the league next month, and a step in the right direction for the Nuggets’ title hopes would be to earn another road win in Game 5.