Amex 2025-26 Season Preview<\/a><\/p>\nDENVER \u2014 Nikola Joki\u0107 considers the Denver Nuggets\u00a0a dark horse in the race for an NBA title.<\/p>\n
Technically speaking, of course, they\u2019re not. Far from it, even.<\/p>\n
The Nuggets are only slightly behind the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder as a favorite to lift the Larry O\u2019Brien trophy at the end of the season. One thing\u2019s for sure: There\u2019s plenty of horsepower in the Northwest Division, with Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves a strong contender, too. Portland and Utah are up-and-comers with youthful lineups.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are definitely the hunted one and they\u2019re playing good,\u201d Joki\u0107 said of the Thunder. \u201cHopefully we can be the \u2014 how do you say it? The silent knight? Silent horse? Dark horse.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the\u00a0league\u2019s annual preseason\u00a0polling of general managers, three of the top four seeds in the West are expected to come out of the Northwest (the Houston Rockets were the exception, as the third seed). All paths to the NBA title, though, lead through Oklahoma City, where Kia MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander\u00a0and his teammates aren\u2019t ready to hand over anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would suck to lose the NBA championship in 2026,\u201d Gilgeous-Alexander said. \u201cThat\u2019s the new focus. That\u2019s the new goal. \u2026 Hopefully we look up and we\u2019ve accomplished the same thing we just accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the summer\u2019s highlights for Gilgeous-Alexander was taking the NBA trophy back home to Hamilton, Ontario, where he\u00a0received the key to the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine as a kid the Larry O\u2019Brien coming to Hamilton,\u201d said Gilgeous-Alexander, who was\u00a0voted the NBA Finals MVP<\/a>\u00a0after the Thunder beat Indiana in a thrilling series that went seven games. \u201cIt was special.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nikola Joki\u0107 speaks to the media at the Nuggets’ media day. \u2022\u00a0Download the NBA App\u2022\u00a0Amex 2025-26 Season Preview…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,3906,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-216930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-nikola-jokic","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}