Pounding the Rock<\/a><\/p>\nInjury Report: Nuggets: Aaron Gordon \u2013 out (hamstring), Julian Strawther \u2013 out (back), Christian Braun \u2013 out (foot). Spurs: Victor Wembanyama \u2013 out (calf), Stephon Castle \u2013 out (Hip\/Illness), Jordan McLaughlin \u2013 out (hamstring)<\/p>\n
The Three Things<\/p>\n
The thing to watch for:\u00a0Will Denver start fast?<\/p>\n
The Nuggets are down Gordon and Braun so fast starts haven\u2019t been as easy to come by, but with the Spurs missing Wemby it leaves Denver the opportunity to come out of the gate swinging and set the tone for the whole contest. Denver is rested and have the best player on the court \u2013 potentially the two best players if Jamal Murray comes out hot \u2013 and they need to stop playing down to the level of their opponents. The Spurs are dangerous, even without Castle and Wemby, as De\u2019Aaron Fox proved when he put up 37 points and 8 assists to beat the Portland Trail Blazers by 13 in their previous game. The Blazers play a physical game and already own a victory over Denver, so Denver will have to make sure to match San Antonio\u2019s intensity if not exceed it because the Spurs will bring the fight.<\/p>\n
The thing to remember:\u00a0Denver is more than the Jokic-Jamal connection<\/p>\n
Denver\u2019s vaunted deeper roster is being tested early with the injuries, but Peyton Watson has had two impressive performances already including in their last game where Watson went 5-for-12 from deep as the Grizzlies dared him to shoot \u2013 and he did, very well in fact. Without Wembanyama the Spurs may also be rotating multiple bigs to Jokic which will mean it\u2019s up to the open guys to hit shots. Tim Hardaway Jr. and Bruce Brown need to keep up with Devis Vassell on both ends, and Cam Johnson can keep being a secondary creator and shot-maker. Denver has the pieces to win this, those pieces just need to not have eaten too many marshmallow-covered yams.<\/p>\n
The thing to bet:\u00a0a Nuggets win<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if it will be pretty or ugly, but take the dub \u2013 Denver has no desire to let another game on the home court slip away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Full of Thanksgiving leftovers, the Denver Nuggets host the San Antonio Spurs in the final Group Stage battle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6389,32334,3080,6408,82,84,83,1066],"class_list":{"0":"post-68921","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-jamal-murray","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nikola-jokic","12":"tag-san-antonio","13":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","14":"tag-san-antonio-news","15":"tag-san-antonio-spurs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68921","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=68921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}