The Denver Nuggets are jumping right back into the saddle after their victory last night against the Brooklyn Nets. Tonight, they welcome in the Los Angeles Clippers who are winners of nine of their last ten games. B2Bs have generally meant a rag tag group for the Nuggets lately with several players not chancing re-aggravating an injury playing two days in a row. The Clippers meanwhile are starting to get healthy, but could be missing some key players tonight even though they come to Denver well rested. Could be looking at another sloppy game praying for deep bench heroics at Ball Arena tonight.
The Basics
Who: Denver Nuggets (32-16) vs Los Angeles Clippers (22-24)
When: 7PM MST
Where: The Can. Denver, CO.
How to watch/listen: Altitude Sports, Altitude Radio 92.5FM. Accept tickets gifted to you by Steve Ballmer via a fake tree planting company.
Rival blog: 213 Hoops
The Matchup
| Position | Nuggets | Clippers | Advantage |
| PG | Jamal Murray | Kris Dunn | Nuggets |
| SG | Jalen Pickett | James Harden | Clippers |
| SF | Peyton Watson | Kawhi Leonard | Clippers |
| PF | Spencer Jones | John Collins | Clippers |
| C | Jonas Valanciunas | Ivica Zubac | Even |
| Bench | Bruce Brown, Zeke Nnaji, Tim Hardaway Jr., Julian Strawther | Nicolas Batum, Brook Lopez, Jordan Miller, Kobe Sanders | Even |
Injury report*: Nikola Jokic – out (knee), Aaron Gordon – out (hamstring), Christian Braun – out (ankle), Cameron Johnson – out (knee), Tamar Bates – out (foot); Kawhi Leonard – questionable (knee), Bradley Beal – out (hip), Bogdan Bogdanovic – out (hamstring), Derrick Jones – out (knee), Chris Paul – out (old & grumpy), TyTy Washington – out (G-League). *The Denver Nuggets official injury report was not available at the time of writing.
The Three Things
The thing to watch for: PWat vs The Claw
Leonard is listed as questionable tonight but the Clippers are well rested so I am thinking he’ll play. Without the official Nuggets injury report we don’t have any insight on whether they’ll rest Peyton on the B2B like they did the last time they were in this scenario…so we’re rolling with optimism and are going to assume these guys play. If they do then I imagine they will spend the night directly matched up on one another. There’s a little drama here, Peyton infamously said that he felt he could definitely disrupt Leonard in the playoffs last season after Kawhi destroyed the Nuggets in Game 2 with a crazy efficient mid-range game that resulted in thirty-eight points. Leonard never topped 30 again that series and the Clippers ultimately were eliminated in 7 games so there could be a little extra juice tonight with Kawhi getting his first crack at the Nuggets since (he was out in Denver and LAC’s November 12th game this season).
The thing to remember: Somebody else has to carry the scoring load
Speaking of that 11/12 game, that was the night Nikola Jokic put the Clippers through a clinic on his way to fifty-five points. While Joker is close to making his return (all eyes on next week when he is “re-evaluated”) he will not play tonight. The Clippers also have one of the better center duos in the league in Ivica Zubac & Brook Lopez so it’s not like Joker was putting up those numbers simply because the Clippers didn’t have anyone to battle with him. I don’t think the Nuggets can count on Jonas Valanciunas giving them a similar performance from the starting center spot. Someone else will have to step up. The problem is LA is set up to take on Denver’s wing scorers very well. They can stick Leonard on Watson, they have a superb defensive point guard in Kris Dunn to battle with Jamal Murray, they are big on the wings in general and they have plenty of size on their bench. Someone is going to have to step up tonight, if Denver is going to win they’ll need a Jalen Pickett, Spencer Jones or other less heralded player to have a big night.
The thing to bet: Jalen Pickett over 1.5 threes (+138)
Dunn is on Murray, Leonard is on Peyton, the bigs are gonna bang with the bigs which means Jalen Pickett’s primary defender will be James Harden. Like I said, one of these other guys who is going to get 30+ minutes is going to have to step up and my money is on Pickett being that guy. He also only played 15 minutes last night, so I expect he gets a lot of run tonight and takes (and makes!) more than 2 shots.
