The owner of a Greek basketball club says he made a serious formal proposal to the Denver Nuggets this summer to buy Nikola Jokic out of his contract and bring the three-time NBA Most Valuable Player to Athens, and that he plans to try again when Jokic enters free agency next summer.
Dimitrios Giannakopoulos, who owns Panathinaikos Basketball Club, said in a podcast interview that he submitted the proposal to both the Nuggets organization and Jokic himself and received a rejection from both. He described the Nuggets’ response as swift and dismissive. He said he plans to wait until next year.
Jokic has two seasons and approximately $121.8 million remaining on his current Nuggets contract. The second season is a player option, giving him the right to decline it and enter unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2027. Giannakopoulos appears to be targeting that window.
Why the Greek club owner is serious
He acknowledged that his pursuit would strike most NBA observers as implausible. He invited skepticism in the interview while simultaneously maintaining that he had involved Jokic’s agent, Misko Raznatovic, in the discussions and that the proposal was a genuine attempt rather than a publicity effort.
He encouraged skeptics to contact Raznatovic directly to verify that a real proposal was made.
At 31, Jokic is eligible to sign a four-year, $278 million maximum extension with Denver, an opportunity he has declined to accept so far. He has said his intention and desire is to remain in Denver for the rest of his career but that he plans to wait until 2027 to sign an extension for financial reasons. At that point, he would be eligible for a five-year, $359.5 million contract with the Nuggets, which would represent the largest deal in NBA history.
Context from a prior European recruitment attempt
Giannakopoulos has some credibility in this space. He made a similar recruitment push for Nuggets center Jonas Valanciunas last summer, and the reports that emerged from that effort were serious enough to create genuine uncertainty before Valanciunas ultimately stayed in Denver. Valanciunas later departed for Lithuanian EuroLeague club Zalgiris Kaunas this summer.
The Valanciunas situation established that Giannakopoulos will pursue legitimate contact with NBA players and their representation rather than floating vague interest. Whether he has the resources to make an offer competitive with what Denver can offer Jokic is a different question, but the credibility of his recruitment attempts is not zero.
Jokic’s situation with Denver
The Nuggets are aware of their vulnerability on the Jokic extension question and have been operating this offseason with the understanding that a definitive commitment from their franchise player may not come until 2027. The team has kept its roster largely intact while navigating a restricted free agency situation involving Peyton Watson and has added Marvin Bagley III and retained Spencer Jones, matching a two-year, $12 million offer sheet Jones had signed with Oklahoma City.
For Denver, the ideal outcome is that the star signs the 2027 extension and the prospect of Greek basketball as a career destination never becomes a realistic concern. For Giannakopoulos, the ideal outcome is that the player option window creates a moment of leverage that European basketball has never previously been able to apply to a player of his stature.
The Nuggets declined the summer proposal quickly, as expected. What happens when the player option decision arrives next summer is a more open question.
