The Nuggets are back to being the Walking Wounded. Nate Robinson, Randy Foye, JaVale McGee, and now Danilo Gallinari are out for tonight’s game. Gallo has been dealing with some bone bruising in his leg and will not play tonight, according to head coach Brian Shaw. Kenneth Faried will be back on the floor for the Nuggets, after missing the last two road games with some type of lower back strain.
I asked Shaw about Gallo today at shoot around, and came away pretty encouraged at how the coach talked about his talented forward. Unfortunately, we won’t see Gallo tonight. Shaw’s minute distribution will again be a hot topic, the coach spoke about not wanting to play Ty Lawson so much, and he recognized the risk of running Lawson into the ground.
| Game 22: 2014-15 NBA Season | ||
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| Series 0-0 | ||
| Dec. 10, 2014 | ||
| Pepsi Center – Denver, CO | ||
| 8:30 PM MT | ||
| ESPN and Altitude / 950 AM |
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| Norris Cole | PG | Ty Lawson |
| Dwyane Wade | SG | Arron Afflalo |
| Luol Deng | SF | Wilson Chandler |
| Josh McRoberts | PF | Kenneth Faried |
| Chris Bosh | C | Timofey Mozgov |
| Notes | ||
| Hot Hot Hoops – preview up | Blogs | Denver Stiffs |
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Chris Andersen – Sprained Right Ankle (Out), Josh McRoberts – Right Knee Contusion (Questionable), Luol Deng – Right Hand Contusion (Probable), Norris Cole – Dislocated Left Middle Finger (Probable) |
Injuries | JaVale McGee- Left Lower Leg Strain, (Out). Nate Robinson- Thoracic Vertebral Contusion (Out). Randy Foye – Right Vastus Lateralis Strain (Out), Danilo Gallinari – Bone Bruise (Out) |
| The Nuggets beat the Heat in Miami last season. | Etc… | The Heat beat the Nuggets in Denver last season. |
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The team has struggled to find consistent play out of the back up guards as Robinson hasn’t been playing particularly well, and hasn’t been playing much. While he and Foye are dealing with injuries, rookie guard Erick Green has also struggled in very limited minutes. Green is a scoring guard that didn’t run a lot of pick-and-roll at Virginia Tech, and has struggled to pick up the offense thus far with the Nuggets. Green also isn’t the biggest guard and isn’t known as being a big time defender. Fortunately, the Heat don’t have a killer point guard, like so many NBA teams do and the match up with Mario Chalmers, Norris Cole, and even Shabazz Napier might play a little more into Green’s favor. But expect Lawson to log a whole bunch of minutes again tonight.
With Faried back, Shaw will likely use J.J. Hickson at backup center again, even with Jusuf Nurkic rejoining the team after dealing with personal matters back in Bosnia. Wilson Chandler will likely receive a bunch of minutes, but can be spelled with Alonzo Gee tonight – assuming Gary Harris takes some shooting guard minutes. This is a bit of a mess.
We went over a lot of the Nuggets issues on our podcast with Chris Dempsey today, you can listen to that here (we dive into Nuggets at the 20 minute mark).
The Birdman: With Chris Andersen injured, he will again miss a game in Denver. He has yet to play in Denver with the Heat, thus never getting the return ovation he deserves in front of his former home crowd.
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