The Denver Nuggets are hoping to end the NBA regular season as one of the favorites for the NBA Championship. The team, led by MVP candidate Nikola Jokic, currently sits fifth in the Western Conference with a 38-24 record. If their championship hopes are real, they’ll have to make sure they can finish the season competitively as their core squad gets healthy.
They’ve been troubled by injuries to stars like Jokic and Aaron Gordon, but one underrated absence for them for most of the season was Christian Braun. The 24-year-old swingman is averaging 10.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 2.8 assists this season but has played in just 26 games. He’s proving to be a crucial member of their rotation, and the Nuggets will inevitably rely on him to perform come Playoff time. However, if Braun were an NBA prospect in 2026 instead of in 2022 when he was drafted, he might have never made his way to the Nuggets.
Braun, alongside teammate Cameron Johnson, appeared on The Old Man and the Three podcast. In the episode, Braun speaks frankly about the impact of NIL money on the modern NCAA basketball landscape, revealing he likely wouldn’t have declared for the NBA Draft if he were in college right now.
“I did have NIL my last year. I probably got, which I’m very grateful for, but I had like $60,000 total. You couldn’t tell me sh*t. I had $60,000 for the whole year and we won a national championship. I probably walked around campus like an a**hole. I felt like I had the most money in the world. Now thinking if you gave me a million dollars when I was in Lawrence, I wouldn’t make it to the NBA. I guarantee it. No doubt in my mind.”
Johnson weighed in by mentioning how the lack of a financial incentive while in college fueled Braun’s hunger to make it to the NBA, mentioning the pitfalls of becoming a millionaire too early. He advocated his support for the NIL system, but with greater safeguards.
“You learned how to work, you learned hunger and what it takes to get to where you want to go. Now you sustain that rather than getting it a bit too early. It’s an interesting point though, I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all. It was completely necessary. I can go on and on about the NCAA all day. Anything like this where players are supposed to be paid, I just think there needs to be stronger frameworks around it, a little bit more control over it.
Christian Braun spent three seasons with the Kansas Jayhawks, playing a crucial role on their team that won the 2021 National Championship in his junior year. He forgoed his senior year of eligibility, while also foregoing additional years that college athletes during COVID received. His reward was joining a Nuggets squad that won an NBA championship with him in his rookie season, earning a four-year, $13.7 million deal. Last summer, he signed a five-year, $125-million contract with the Nuggets.
Johnson entered the NBA with the Phoenix Suns after spending five seasons in college on a four-year, $16.7 million deal in the 2019 NBA Draft. Now, he’s tallied over $86 million in career earnings and is currently in the third year of a $94.5 million deal.
Braun came into the NBA to maximize his future earnings, but top-tier NCAA athletes nowadays get millions in NIL deals. For some, leaving college to be a late first-round or a second-round pick means sacrificing money. We haven’t seen major ramifications of that so far on the quality of NBA Draft prospects, but it adds a new wrinkle to when college stars like AJ Dybantsa openly discuss returning to college instead of coming into the NBA Draft as a projected top-three pick.
