{"id":6823,"date":"2025-07-19T00:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T00:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/6823\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T00:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T00:56:08","slug":"nuggets-no-concerns-jonas-valanciunas-wont-report-to-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/6823\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuggets — ‘No concerns’ Jonas Valanciunas won’t report to team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jul 18, 2025, 06:59 PM ET<\/p>\n

DENVER — A backup plan to bring in a backup center to spell Nikola Jokic<\/a> no longer appears necessary.<\/p>\n

The Denver Nuggets<\/a> expect Jonas Valanciunas<\/a> to be with the team when the season starts amid speculation over his NBA future.<\/p>\n

Denver’s trade with Sacramento<\/a> to acquire the 6-foot-11 Valanciunas for Dario Saric<\/a> became official last weekend. Leading up that, reports emerged of Valanciunas being courted by the Greek EuroLeague club team Panathinaikos. It’s led to a confusing situation given that Valanciunas still has two years remaining on his NBA deal that would pay him a total of more than $20 million.<\/p>\n

Nuggets executive vice president of basketball operations Ben Tenzer attempted to tamp down any conjecture over Valanciunas’ arrival during a news conference Friday that was set up to introduce Cam Johnson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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“There’s been nothing but healthy conversations in terms of him honoring his contract and him excited to be a Nugget,” Tenzer said of Valanciunas.<\/p>\n

So, no concerns that Valanciunas might not be with the Nuggets to start the season?<\/p>\n

“No concerns,” Tenzer said.<\/p>\n

The trade for the 33-year-old Valanciunas looks to be the icing on a productive offseason that saw the front-office tandem of Tenzer and Jonathan Wallace remodel the team. The moves were in the wake of a Game 7 loss to NBA champion Oklahoma City in the second round.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets also picked up Johnson in a deal that sent Michael Porter Jr<\/a>. — a key contributor to their title run in 2023 — to Brooklyn. Denver added Bruce Brown<\/a>, who was part of their championship run, and shooting guard\/small forward Tim Hardaway Jr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tenzer said they’ve have had productive talks with Valanciunas, who’s slated to play for Lithuania at FIBA EuroBasket this summer. Someone from the Nuggets may even venture over there.<\/p>\n

“Their plan is for him to get here sooner than later, but still working through that,” Wallace said. “We’ll approach it at that time.”<\/p>\n

Valanciunas is coming off a season in which he split time between Washington and Sacramento. He averaged 10.4 points, 7.7 rebounds and two assists over 81 games.<\/p>\n

Denver is counting on him to give Jokic the occasional breather. The 30-year-old Jokic averaged a career-high 36.7 minutes per game last season.<\/p>\n

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jul 18, 2025, 06:59 PM ET DENVER — A backup plan to bring in a backup center to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-6823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}