Pounding The Rock<\/a><\/p>\nInjury Report | Nuggets: Nikola Jokic\u2014questionable (might need to play 15 minutes to qualify for awards season); Christian Braun\u2014out (he\u2019s fine); Aaron Gordon\u2014out (he\u2019s fine too); Tim Hardaway Jr.\u2014out (also fine); Cameron Johnson\u2014out (still fine); Jamal Murray\u2014out (the finest); Spencer Jones\u2014out (this one\u2019s a hamstring, being cautious); Peyton Watson\u2014out (also a hamstring, also cautious)<\/p>\n
San Antonio Spurs: Stephon Castle\u2014questionable (gauging how serious Denver will be); Devin Vassell\u2014questionable (ribs are achy); Victor Wembanyama\u2014 questionable (if Jokic plays some, maybe Vic plays some); David Jones Garcia\u2014out (foot surgery); Luke Kornet\u2014out (shoulder);<\/p>\n
The Three Things<\/p>\n
The thing to watch for: Will DaRon Holmes get minutes? The Nuggets invested 4 picks (a first and three seconds) in Holmes under Calvin Booth to get Denver a stretch 4 and potential small-ball 5 who can shoot from outside and has nice paint touch, sets screens, ably passes the ball and rebounds especially against smaller lineups. After tearing his Achilles in the 2024 Summer League he lost a whole year to injury. This year he\u2019s been healthy while Denver has not been \u2013 and still has only managed to get 200 minutes on the NBA court. He played 2 minutes against the Thunder when Denver sat all its starters and was missing 7 players in total. The Nuggets gave a giant chunk of minutes to impending-free-agent David Roddy \u2013 who played well! \u2013 and almost none to the power forward they have under contract for two more years. <\/p>\n
Maybe Denver doesn\u2019t need to see anything else from Holmes. Perhaps they\u2019ve already determined his future is much like Hunter Tyson\u2019s \u2013 not much of one. But I find that hard to believe from the glimpses we\u2019ve been allowed to see of him, and refusing to play one of your few backup front-court players going into next season when you desperately need to take some of the weight off of Aaron Gordon in the regular season to save his legs for the playoffs is A Choice. Maybe Holmes gets a lot of run in this one, maybe he gets none. Him getting playing time doesn\u2019t guarantee him anything for next year, but him getting very little \u2013 again, in a game played mostly with backups \u2013 would speak very loudly about Denver\u2019s plans for the backup 4 next year not including Holmes much at all.<\/p>\n
The thing to remember: Denver has home court for round one regardless of the outcome of this game. The Nuggets might be the four seed, they might be the three. They cannot be the five, so no matter what Denver will be hosting the first two games of a playoff series. Relax about seeding and just grind out this sickos game with the rest of us,<\/p>\n
The thing to bet: Whatever the under is on DaRon Holmes minutes, unfortunately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is it: the final regular season contest of the year for the Denver Nuggets as they face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6389,3080,6408,82,84,83,1066],"class_list":{"0":"post-246880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-denver-nuggets","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-nikola-jokic","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","13":"tag-san-antonio-news","14":"tag-san-antonio-spurs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}