{"id":392538,"date":"2026-01-05T06:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T06:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/392538\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T06:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T06:15:09","slug":"depleted-nuggets-get-christian-braun-aaron-gordon-back-in-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/392538\/","title":{"rendered":"Depleted Nuggets get Christian Braun, Aaron Gordon back in loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

The injury-ravaged Denver Nuggets<\/a> got reinforcements Sunday as starters Christian Braun<\/a> and Aaron Gordon<\/a> both returned from lengthy injury absences, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the hot-shooting Nets.<\/p>\n

Braun, who had missed 23 games with an ankle injury, and Gordon, who had missed 19 straight because of a hamstring strain, played 24 and 21 minutes, respectively, in the 127-115 loss. They were both on a minutes limit.<\/p>\n

Denver is trying to balance getting itself healthy and staying afloat while enduring a stretch without not only Nikola Jokic<\/a>, but also his backup, Jonas Valanciunas<\/a>, as well as starting forward Cameron Johnson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a result, coach David Adelman said that he will consult with the training staff over whether he will play star guard Jamal Murray Monday night in Philadelphia on the second night of a back-to-back after playing Murray 40 minutes Sunday.<\/p>\n

Murray, who had 27 points and 16 assists against Brooklyn, simply said he’s “trying to win games” when asked if he expected to play in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

It’s also unlikely either Braun or Gordon would play both halves of a back-to-back immediately upon returning from more than a month on the sidelines, though both of them said they felt OK — albeit out of rhythm — in their returns.<\/p>\n

Despite the loss, Braun and Gordon back on the court was a welcome sight for a Nuggets team that kept losing key players in recent weeks and played the last two games without four starters. Jokic, Valanciunas and Johnson are all expected to miss multiple weeks.<\/p>\n

The Nets’ victory was a measure of revenge for former longtime Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr<\/a>., who Denver traded to Brooklyn before the season for Johnson. Porter, who has enjoyed a breakout season with the Nets, scored 27 points to go along with 11 rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets dropped to 1-2 in games since Jokic went down with his knee injury.<\/p>\n

ESPN’s Tim Bontemps contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The injury-ravaged Denver Nuggets got reinforcements Sunday as starters Christian Braun and Aaron Gordon both returned from lengthy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-392538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}