Are the Denver Nuggets over the apron in 2028-29?

No. The Nuggets are under both aprons for 2028-29 (projected), with $119.4M of room before the first.

Apron payroll

$119.6M

First apron

$239.0M ($119.4M)

Second apron

$254.0M ($134.4M)

Their apron payroll (contracts, dead money, and unlikely incentives) is $119.6M, against a first apron of $239.0M and a second apron of $254.0M (projected).

Staying under the aprons preserves the full toolkit: the full mid-level, the bi-annual exception, and sign-and-trade flexibility. Several of those tools hard-cap a team at an apron once used, which is why the margins matter.

This is a forward look at 2028-29: it counts the contracts, options, and cap holds already on the Nuggets books for that season. Signings, trades, and option decisions between now and then will move these numbers.

The rule behind this

The first apron is a spending line a few million above the luxury tax. Crossing it costs a team roster-building tools rather than just money: no acquiring players via sign-and-trade, no full mid-level exception (only the smaller taxpayer MLE), no bi-annual exception, no signing buyout players who earned more than the MLE, and trades must return salary within 110% of what goes out.

What is the first apron? →What is the second apron? →What is the hard cap? →

Numbers come straight from the live Nuggets cap sheet, recomputed whenever the data updates.