Nuggets Sign Nikola Jokić

JULY 28TH, 12:26pm: The signing is official, the Nuggets announced. For more details on the contract, click here.

JULY 14TH, 8:34am: The Nuggets have yet to make an official announcement, but the signing has taken place, according to the RealGM transactions log.

JULY 13TH, 11:09am: The four-year deal is worth $5.5MM, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com, who indicates that Jokić has already signed the deal. The team has yet to make any formal announcement (Twitter links).

JULY 10TH, 11:28am: It’s a four-year deal with an option on year four, agent Misko Raznatovic tweets (hat tip to Sportando’s Enea Trapani). It’s not clear whether that’s a team or player option. The team still hasn’t made any formal announcement.

JUNE 30TH, 12:12pm: The Nuggets are finalizing a fully guaranteed three-year contract with Nikola Jokić, whom Denver drafted 41st overall last year, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post wrote in May and again on Twitter today that Denver was expected to sign the 6’10” center before summer league, but it wasn’t clear just what sort of deal he would be getting.

Jokić had been insistent on a long-term deal, but he was enthusiastic about the prospect of joining Denver and had begun making it known he was on his way there, as David Pick of Eurobasket.com chronicled. The 20-year-old averaged 16.5 points, 9.7 rebounds in 29.5 minutes per game for KK Mega Vizura in his native Serbia this past season.

Denver has about $53MM in guaranteed salary against a projected $67.1MM cap, so the Nuggets could open cap space and sign Jokić into that. Otherwise, they’d have to use the $5.434MM mid-level exception on him. Either way, the signing couldn’t become official until next week, when the July Moratorium is over.