The Denver Nuggets begin the defense of their NBA championship tonight as they tip off the first game of the 2023-24 regular season, featuring all the pomp and circumstance of the ring ceremony and banner raising, against the Los Angeles Lakers, who they swept in the Western Conference Finals last postseason.

But will Denver be able to successfully repeat their title win? Can Jamal Murray make his first All-Star team? Will Nikola Jokic win his third MVP? What’s in store for the team and players as this next chapter unfolds?

In a humble attempt to try to prognosticate the answers to some of these questions, here are nine bold predictions for the Denver Nuggets in their upcoming season.

9. The Denver Nuggets will be top-five in offense and top-12 in defense, and their starting lineup will be top-three in net rating

This may not seem like too bold a prediction. According to Cleaning the Glass, last season the Nuggets were fifth in offense at 118.3, and 17th in defense at 114.6. And defensively, the 12th-best Golden State Warriors were not far off at 114.2, making a small leap appear plausible.

As for the starting lineup of Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and Nikola Jokic, their plus-12.7 point differential was fifth-best among all lineups with at least 500 possessions, and first among those with at least 800 possessions.

But while these predictions may seem quite attainable for Denver, consistently maintaining excellence, or ever very-good-ness over back-to-back seasons, especially as they integrate many new and/or unproven players into their bench rotation and navigate other complications like injuries, will be a significant challenge that shouldn’t be underestimated. Even so, I predict they check all these boxes.

8. Zeke Nnaji will have a career year, with his three-point percentage back in the .400s, and rebounding over five boards per game for the first time in his career

As I wrote earlier for Forbes, fourth-year big man Zeke Nnaji has just signed a four-year, $32 million extension with Denver just as he enters the most important season of his career, after injuries and other setbacks made for a bumpy road in his first three years.

But this season, especially if he stays healthy, Nnaji will have the best chance of his career to put it all together. With the departures of Jeff Green and Bruce Brown, and Vlatko Cancar’s season-long injury absence, Nnaji will almost certainly be called upon to play a much larger role than he ever has, as permanent backup center to Jokic. The minutes, reps and continuity he’ll have should help him develop not only better consistency but also greater overall production. I expect him to take full advantage and have himself a season that really stands out beyond his first three.

7. The Nuggets will make at least one trade by the February 8 deadline, but only very deep bench players will be involved

The Nuggets are still in their “everybody’s happy” post-title honeymoon phase right now, and well earned it was, but realities about challenges they’ll face this season will soon come to light. And unquestionably many of those challenges will arise from bench complications, as they integrate three new rookies, three sophomores (but only one in Christian Braun with extensive first-year experience), one new veteran in Justin Holiday, and Reggie Jackson, who although traded at the deadline to the Nuggets last season, will be playing a larger and different role now as backup point guard to Jamal Murray.

Head coach Michael Malone and his staff will have their hands full not only finding bench and staggered lineup combinations that work, but at the same time simply figuring out who the players on their roster actually are, who can be trusted as reliable, whose development is on a fast (or slow) track, and most importantly, who they’re confident they can go to battle with in the playoffs.

If the Nuggets identify one or more players they feel they should, or at least can part ways with, it would not be too surprising if they made a minor move or two, especially if they believe it might bolster their title hopes for this season or even down the line.

6. Julian Strawther will be a rotation player from Game 1 of the regular season, and also ultimately in Denver’s playoff rotation, but with some bench “intermissions” along the way

Strawther was the Nuggets preseason standout, scoring 17.8 points shooting .511 from the field, a blistering .45.2 on three-pointers, and .900 on free throws. More importantly, he just looked and played like a seasoned NBA player, knowing and getting to his spots, playing solid and aggressive defense on a string, making the right cuts with the right timing, and above all shooting the ball with confidence and poise, and no hesitation.

Among Denver’s three rookies, Strawther looked most likely to have earned a rotation spot from the get-go, and again, with Brown, Green and Cancar leaving holes in the depth chart, there is not only an opportunity for Strawther, but a probable need for the Nuggets to utilize him and get him playoff-ready.

That said, Malone has his process, and a big part of that is “You have to earn it,” and a great preseason is far from enough to cement that. As nearly every rookie does, Strawther will likely hit some turbulence from time to time throughout the season. And when that happens, don’t be surprised if he rides the pine for a stretch. Even so, he has just looked too good not to play, and I expect his rotation spot to be fully secure by season’s end.

5. Michael Porter Jr. will have a career year, including averaging 3.5 or more three-pointers on .410 or better shooting from the arc, and grabbing seven rebounds per game

Porter is entering this season in presumably the best health and physical conditioning he’s had in years. And it was clearly evident over the course of last season that as he continued his rehab and recovery process coming off the back surgery that ended his previous season, the impact that getting fully healthy had on his game was enormous.

MPJ should be more primed than ever to start this season strong, and as Denver’s starting five only get progressively more cohesive, he should get more touches than ever now that the Nuggets have better figured out how to involve him in the offense more.

Porter has never averaged over 3.0 three-pointers per game (last season), and has only had over seven rebounds once (in the 2020-21 season). Given better health for a full season, and his teammates having the most confidence in him they’ve ever had, I predict he’ll get more threes up and hit or exceed that 3.5 per game mark, while staying at or near his career average three-point percentage of .417.

Likewise, Porter’s rebounding (and other things like dunking) showed a lot more bounce and aggression late season and into the playoffs as his body became more thoroughly healed and conditioned. There’s no reason he shouldn’t hit the ground running on the boards this season, and that seven per game mark is well withing reach if that’s the case.

4. Aaron Gordon will make the NBA All-Defensive Second Team

This prediction is somewhat reliant on my previous one that the Nuggets will have a top-12 defense, as making a player’s case for All-Defensive team gets pretty difficult if his team’s overall defense is much worse than that.

That said, after guarding the likes of Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Jimmy Butler (among many other stars) in the Nuggets’ 16-4 championship run, Gordon should now be much more squarely in the center of the NBA’s collective radar screen.

Last season Gordon got one single second team vote. I suspect there may be something of a “makeup call” factor after Denver’s impressive defensive performance in the playoffs, and if he doesn’t make the cut, he should most likely be in that small handful of players on the bubble with the most votes.

3.Jamal Murray will have a career year, and join Nikola Jokic on the All-NBA roster, but as Third Team not First Team

“Have a career year” is obviously a recurring theme here, and there’s no more obvious candidate for that than Jamal Murray, whose transcendent playoff performance has now dramatically outshined regular seasons featuring a few more ups and downs. In fact, according to ESPN, Murray has the single biggest points per game increase from the regular season (where he’s averaged 16.9 points) to the playoffs (where that’s leapt to 24.7) in all of NBA history, with a differential of plus-7.8. (Interestingly enough, Jokic is second at 20.2, 27.2, and plus-7.0 respectively.)

Dragged down a bit especially at the beginning of seasons, last year due to recovery from injury, more because of just generally slow, sluggish starts in previous seasons, this represents Murray’s best chance to come out of the gates firing on all cylinders from the start. If so, and Murray can produce 24-25 points, six assists and five rebounds on continued efficient shooting, he should not only be a shoe-in for his first All-Star appearance, but also at least in the conversation for All-NBA. And part of that conversation is that if Murray makes All-NBA, he qualifies for a supermax contract (a huge part of the reason why he, unlike Nnaji, did not sign an extension at the deadline).

2. Nikola Jokic will win his third MVP award

This one’s pretty simple. Nikola Jokic should have won MVP last season. If he plays like that again – and he should, since he gets better every year – then awarding him his third MVP will not only be the correct choice, but will also at least partly rectify his not winning the award last season.

1. The Denver Nuggets will win the first back-to-back NBA championship since 2018

Winning NBA championships is very, very difficult. Winning back-to-back titles? Even harder, as evidenced by the fact it’s only been done four times by three teams in the last 25 years, most recently by the Golden State Warriors in 2018.

On top of that, the Milwaukee Bucks got Damian Lillard, The Phoenix Suns got Bradley Beal, the Boston Celtics got Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday – things are getting crowded at the top among the league’s contenders.

So why would the Nuggets be able to repeat? The aforementioned dominance of their starting five, and specifically of Jokic and the many ways he combines with his teammates to create practically unstoppable actions on offense, is the bedrock foundation which everything else is built on. And without having yet seen some of those newly-shuffled contenders, there’s no reason to believe that any other team has a stronger foundation.

As for figuring out the bench? They figured it out last season, and while there are concerns, there is also good reason to believe they’ll figure it out again by the time the playoffs roll around. And while the three teams mentioned above all have better Vegas odds to win it all, I’ll take Denver’s continuity, their talent, their ability to rise to the occasion on both ends of the court when it counts most, and the simple fact that they’ve proven they know how to do it, all as arrows pointing to the Nuggets repeating their championship, and hanging a second banner next to the one they hang tonight.