Tonight’s game is an elimination game for the NBA Cup. Both the Houston Rockets and Denver Nuggets are 1-1, so the loser will be 1-2 and need a lot of help. Denver might have a path forward since their last opponent is an injury-ravaged San Antonio Spurs in Colorado. Meanwhile, Houston will play at Golden State for their final game and would need to win and win big. That’s a tall task.
The Nuggets, in case you had forgotten, have the best player in the world in Nikola Jokic. He’s leading the league in both rebounds and assists. He’s seventh in points. He’s leading the league in basically every advanced statistic (PER, WS, WS/48, BPM, and VORP to name a few). The offseason move to bring in Jonas Valanciunas to play backup center has given Jokic his best backup play in years, and suddenly the team doesn’t fall off a cliff every time he sits. That’s still going to happen, and it’s not like your bench unit can play as well as a lineup that features prime Jokic, but they’re holding their own and then some.
As an aside, it’s absolute malpractice from the NBA schedule makers that Denver and OKC don’t play each other until February 1. Then they play each other three times in a six-week span to end the season. These games should have been spaced out better, and one of them probably should have been on Christmas Day. Alas.
Houston will need to play better than they did against Orlando and Cleveland to hang with Denver. Last season, the Nuggets lost to Houston when they sat Jokic in Denver, but beat Houston at Toyota Center without Jokic. These teams met on the final day of the season in Houston as well. While the Rockets didn’t need the game and were locked into their seeding, Ime Udoka wanted to use it as a dress rehearsal for the playoffs. Denver dismantled Houston and the Rockets certainly didn’t recover in time for Game 1 against the Warriors.
Both teams obviously look different than last season, but Houston will need to bring their A game on both ends of the court to even have a shot tonight. I’m not sure what strain of drug they’re smoking in Las Vegas these days, but that line makes zero sense to me.
Dorian Finney-Smith: OUT (ankle)
Jabari Smith Jr. GTD (knee)
Steven Adams: GTD (ankle)
The Line (as of this post)
Looking ahead because we can
Monday night on the road against the Phoenix Suns
