Nuggets waive Jonas Valanciunas for salary cap relief, days after signing Marvin Bagley III

Bennett Durando, The Denver Post on Jul 8, 2026

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DENVER — The Denver Nuggets are waiving backup center Jonas Valanciunas, a league source told The Denver Post on Wednesday, an expected move that provides them with at least $8 million in salary cap relief.

One year after a EuroLeague team tried to lure him away from the NBA, Valanciunas might have a path to return overseas and play closer to home. Other NBA teams in need of frontcourt depth are also reportedly expected to show interest in the Lithuanian big man.

Valanciunas backed up Nikola Jokic during his lone season in Denver, one of the only situations in his 14-year NBA career in which he regularly played off the bench.

If this is the end of that career, Valanciunas will have appeared in 1,002 games, starting 854 of them. Most known for his six years and change in Toronto, he’s averaged 12.8 points and nine rebounds in the NBA. He averaged 8.7 points and 5.1 rebounds per game as a Nugget.

The 34-year-old had a non-guaranteed $10 million salary with the Nuggets next season. Last October, the team amended his contract to guarantee him $2 million of that total in exchange for pushing back the guarantee deadline to July 8.

The Nuggets’ rationale was to give themselves a longer runway into the 2026-27 league year to explore trade options involving Valanciunas. The problem with their efforts to trade him over the last few days was that any team taking on his contract would have had to shoulder the full $10 million.

Valanciunas was acquired by Denver in a trade that sent Dario Saric to Sacramento last offseason. After the trade was completed and while Valanciunas was competing overseas with the Lithuanian national team, the popular Greek club Panathinaikos attempted to pull him away from Denver with a three-year contract offer.

He was unable to sign it while under contract in the NBA, though, and the Nuggets were unwilling to release him from that deal. Teammates and coaches vouched for his professionalism throughout the 2025-26 season as he played the fewest total minutes of his career (871).

Knowing they would need a second-string center behind Jokic yet again, the Nuggets agreed to a one-year deal with Marvin Bagley III last week. Valanciunas was more successful than most backup bigs who’ve passed through Ball Arena, but he faded out of the rotation late in the season as coach David Adelman went to a small-ball look more frequently.

Bagley, DaRon Holmes II and Zeke Nnaji are currently the biggest bench players on the roster. Aaron Gordon and Spencer Jones have also played the five in some of those smaller lineups. Jones is currently negotiating for a new contract with the Nuggets as a restricted free agent. Bagley will be paid the veteran minimum salary, taking up a smaller percentage of Denver’s cap than Valanciunas did.

Waiving Valanciunas leaves Denver about $6 million below the second apron for now, but with five open roster spots. The Nuggets can choose to stretch the $2 million in guaranteed salary across three seasons if they want. That would reduce their dead cap to $666,666 for next season and each of the following two. It was unclear on Wednesday afternoon whether they would choose to do that.

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