According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Reggie Jackson is accepting his player option with the Denver Nuggets for the ’24/’25 season.

Jackson signed with the Nuggets last season via the taxpayer mid-level exception. MLE deals are required to be at least two years in length so in order to get the deal done the Nuggets gave Jackson a second year with a player option. This now brings the Nuggets current roster to eleven full NBA contracts and the expectation is that forward Vlatko Cancar will re-sign, along with the Nuggets using their selection on a first round pick in Wednesday’s draft, which will bring the roster to thirteen. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has until June 29th to decide on his player option. It is expected that he will decline that option and enter free agency.

Jackson returning to the Nuggets for the next season is maybe not the most ideal scenario but not a bad one. He showed last season that he is still a capable backup point guard and his veteran presence is a welcome one on the team. Last season he was asked to do quite a bit more than Denver probably anticipated with Jamal Murray’s multiple injuries and to Reggie’s credit he did about as good as one could hope in that scenario.

The major issue with his game wasn’t really anything he was doing, but with the way the roster was built Jackson became the sixth man after Bruce Brown left. While at one point in his career he was one of the best in that role, nowadays he’s much more suited to simply be the bench floor general and not the bench scorer. The question will become, with the limited roster moves available to Denver, can they find a way to add to their bench rotation to relieve the scoring pressure that was put on Jackson last season? If KCP doesn’t return then bench scoring could be an area the Nuggets look to shore up with their taxpayer MLE this Summer, or perhaps it will translate to a larger role for Julian Strawther who flashed his scoring ability on a couple occasions last season.

One thing should be fairly certain, the point guard rotation is at this moment set. There’s no reason to think Jalen Pickett, Colin Gillespie or someone else the Nuggets could acquire will have a leg up on Jackson to become Murray’s backup this upcoming season. Perhaps in a perfect world Pickett ends up wrestling that role away from Jackson but given the two players’ relative performances last season and Michael Malone’s comfort with Reggie, thinking anyone other than Jackson will enter training camp as the backup PG seems foolish. That being said, Reggie is on the wrong side of 30, another year older and now officially in the final year of his contract so it will behoove Denver to solidify a solution to eventually replace him.