Continued patience or accelerated timeline: Will the Nuggets’ surprising rise up the Western Conference alter their offseason plans?

Patience has been a prevailing theme to the Nuggets’ rebuild and now ascension up the NBA hierarchy over the last few seasons. At nearly every turn, Denver brass chose a prudent approach over one that could have led to more immediate success but also less sustained excellence.

The Nuggets boasted more than enough assets to get into the mix for Jimmy Butler when the four-time All-Star requested a trade from Minnesota. Kawhi Leonard was available last summer too, and Denver could have easily assembled a trade package that rivaled San Antonio’s eventual haul from Toronto of DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and a future pick but chose to stand pat. Would the Nuggets have been a better team last season with Butler or Leonard alongside Nikola Jokic and what would have been left of Denver’s young ensemble? Definitely. But Butler had just one year left on his contract and Leonard’s camp relayed to Denver that he didn’t have a desire to stick with the Nuggets past this season, league sources say.

Does a surprising rise up the Western Conference hierarchy alter the approach that Denver has preached up until this point? The Nuggets were just supposed to make the playoffs last season, not finish with the second-best record in the West and flip-flop back and forth all season with the Warriors for the top spot. Denver advanced a round in the postseason and was just one game, a couple of minutes, or a few 50-50 plays away from reaching the Conference Finals. With the Warriors’ future past this season a bit uncertain there’s a light breeze blowing through the small opening in Denver’s championship window.

The Nuggets have two paths that they can follow this summer. Behind door No. 1 is a scenario where Denver runs it back with largely the same group and lightly dips one of their toes into the free agent waters by nabbing a quality role player to add to their rotation. Behind door No. 2 is a week-long walk down Madison Avenue where the Nuggets go window shopping for a top free agent or All-Star who finds themselves on the trade block.

Door 2 is sexy. It would draw headlines. It’s what the Nuggets’ fanbase wants their franchise to do in order to keep their momentum heading in the right direction. Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Kawhi Leonard change the expectations and realities of your franchise the minute they walk through your doors and any of those All-Stars added to the Nuggets’ current core would make Denver the favorites in the Western Conference next season unless Golden State brought back the two-time Finals Most Valuable Player. Anthony Davis is also sitting in New Orleans hoping that a title-contender plucks him from the bayou so he can ring chase for one season before signing with the Lakers, like many around the league presume he will.

Ideally, the Nuggets would follow the path of the 2013 Warriors this summer. After a 47-win regular season, which came after a 23-win campaign in 2012, and concluded with a loss in the Western Conference Semifinals (much like Denver) after disposing of the third-seeded Nuggets in the first-round, Golden State mostly ran it back. The Warriors returned all five of their starters in Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes, David Lee and Andrew Bogut but with one exception. They got busy in free agency.

Golden State dumped around $24 million in salary in Andris Biedrins, Richard Jefferson, Brandon Rush and several future draft picks to open up the space necessary to ink Andre Iguodala, the former Nugget who the Warriors had just gone toe-to-toe with in the playoffs that spring. The Warriors and Iguodala agreed to a four-year, $44 million contract which the forward ended up agreeing to in a sign-and-trade that sent him from Denver to the Bay Area.

The deal was a stunner and one of the first power moves of Bob Myers’ tenure running the Warriors. Golden State’s president of basketball operations called the signing “a very unlikely scenario that actually played out for us” at the time and only came to fruition after Iguodala reportedly spurned more lucrative offers from Sacramento and Denver. Dallas also reportedly made a competitive offer to the swingman.

The addition was a transformative moment for the Warriors. Golden State was once thought of as an afterthought in free agency (sound familiar?) but Iguodala, who that summer was one of the marquee free agents in a class that was headlined by him, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Josh Smith and Tyreke Evans, helped turn the Warriors into a destination franchise.

“I think they were missing one piece,” Iguodala said at the time. “And hopefully I can be that piece to get that team to where we all want to be, which is to try and win a championship.”

A near best-case scenario this summer involves the Nuggets finding their Iguodala. You could say the Nuggets did that two summers ago when they inked Paul Millsap, but Denver was much more than one piece away at that point. Perhaps the Nuggets thought Isaiah Thomas would be their version of Iguodala last summer, but even while many thought the backup point guard would play a role for the Nuggets in the playoffs, few saw him having an Iguodala-type impact. Now, Denver is coming off a playoff run much like Golden State was in 2013.

So who’s the Iguodala of this summer, the free agent that can elevate Denver to a new level and be the multi-positional Swiss Army knife that sprung the Warriors forward?

Klay Thompson, Khris Middleton, Tobias Harris and Jimmy Butler would all fit the bill, but it’s hard envisioning any of those wings taking a pay cut — like Iguodala did to go to Golden State — to sign in Denver. Would any of those free agents prioritize winning over a few extra dollars? The Nuggets, if they got the right intel or a commitment from one in a meeting early in the free agent process, could open up the necessary cap space to sign one to a near max deal if that’s the route they wanted to go too.

A much more likely approach involves the Nuggets running it back and bolstering their rotation with a multi-positional combo forward who can help them out on the defensive end of the floor. The Nuggets and Paul Millsap both want to see the power forward’s career continue in Denver and the belief around the organization is that the 34-year-old will be back with the franchise next season even if they decline his $30 million team option. But if Millsap is back, the Nuggets won’t have much money to spend or many minutes to offer to a free agent who would back up the four-time All-Star or provide some defensive versatility on the wing — the Nuggets’ biggest needs ahead of the night of June 30 when free agency begins.

The Nuggets seem comfortable running it back and they should. With the same rotation returning next season a year older and wiser, Denver would be an improved team. The playoff experience that the Nuggets’ first-time postseason participants got this season would pay dividends next April too.

“The easy answer is always to say, ‘Let’s go get player X,'” Michael Malone said about improving the Nuggets’ roster this summer. “The challenge sometimes is, ‘Let’s build one of our own players into that player.’ And we’ve had countless examples of that, which I think is a testament to the culture we have here.”

Then again, the NBA can shift quickly. Reading the tea leaves it doesn’t seem likely that the Nuggets will be in a position to sign their Iguodala this summer, but neither were the Warriors when their 2012-13 season ended.