The Denver Nuggets have been remarkably successful in the last few seasons, but since they won the NBA Finals in 2023, they haven't been able to reach the same heights even with their regular season success and when trying to analyze what exactly went wrong as to why the Nuggets can't replicate their championship caliber play, chemistry could be a big part of it. 

For any championship team, there are a number of intangibles that contribute to the perfect storm that is a championship run, luck and good fortune being among them, but the biggest intangible that a team needs to succeed in any capacity is chemistry, something that the 2023 champion Nuggets had in spades. 

But in the years since, the roster that took the Nuggets to the peak of the NBA has slowly withered away. In the three seasons since the 2023 championship, 11 players from that Nuggets roster have left the team, either through trades or free agency, and while the core of the team, namely Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon, still remain, there are several crucial support pieces missing from their roster since then. 

Michael Porter Jr. was one of those support pieces, playing the first six seasons of his career in Denver, but during a recent episode of the "Curious Mike" podcast, Porter Jr. commented on how he doesn't understand how the Nuggets let a different crucial role player from that roster walk just one season later. 

I don't know why they let [Kentavious Caldwell-Pope] go... That was the beginning of the downfall," Porter Jr. said (via Legion Hoops). 

Caldwell-Pope has been somewhat of a journeyman during his 13 seasons in the NBA, playing for six different teams at this point, but some of his best years were with the Nuggets in the two seasons that he played with them from 2022-24. 

Calwell-Pope was a workhorse for the Nuggets during those two seasons, playing 76 games in both seasons, starting every game each time, while averaging 10.5 points, 2.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game. 

Those numbers don't exactly jump off the page, but the role that Caldwell-Pope played on that roster was hyper specific and provided energy and outstanding defense to a team that had plenty of offensive weapons already. 

He was instrumental in the 2023 championship run, yet when he entered free agency after the 2023-24 season, the Nuggets didn't put up much of a fight to re-sign him and he instead signed with the Orlando Magic on a three-year, $66 million contract, though he's since been traded to the Memphis Grizzlies. 

Ironically enough, a gritty perimeter defender is exactly what the Nuggets need on their roster right now, so Porter Jr. may be on to something with his observation that letting Caldwell-Pope in particular walk was the signal that the roster that led Denver to so much success was breaking down.