I actually lost interest in Deno once it started leaning into NPM. I thought it was a bold and wise idea to make a clean break from the mess of Node and restart with a sensible ecosystem. Absent that... I'm just sticking with Node.
I would not say npm was the right direction. I actually was a fan of JSR (didn't work on it but all my experience with it was great)
No way it would go through standard build pipelines, or team skills.