Preview: Denver Nuggets face San Antonio Spurs and rising star Victor Wembanyama

The Denver Nuggets start a home and home against the San Antonio Spurs tonight at the friendly confines of Ball Arena. It will be a matchup of the current best player on earth vs the player everyone assumes will become the best player on earth. That matchup of course is Nikola Jokic vs Victor Wembanyama. Wemby is continuing his ascension in the NBA in his sophomore season. He has the Spurs with a winning record 33 games in and they are in prime position to compete for a play-in spot if not an outright postseason birth. Outside of Wemby, the Spurs have a collected a couple of solid veterans like Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes and, since they’ve been bad for a bit, have some intriguing young pieces as well like Jeremy Sochan (out tonight) and Devin Vassell. Tonight’s a true take care of business or get the business kind of game.

The Essentials

Who: Denver Nuggets (19-13) vs San Antonio Spurs (17-16)

When: 7:00 PM MST

Where: The Can. Denver, CO.

How to watch: Altitude TV, My20 KTVD, NBA League Pass for those not in the Nuggets market, Altitude Radio 92.5FM. Show up to the arena with a bunch of clothes tailored to a person with a three and a half foot long torso and claim to be Wemby’s stylist.

Rival blog: Pounding The Rock

The Matchup

Injury report: Aaron Gordon – out (calf), Vlatko Cancar – out (knee), DaRon Holmes II – out (achilles), Trey Alexander – out (G-League), PJ Hall – out (G-League); Jeremy Sochan – out (back), David Duke Jr – out (G-League), Harrison Ingram – out (G-League), Riley Minix – out (G-League).

The thing to watch for: Jokic vs Wemby

As if anything else could be highlighted as the thing to watch for tonight. Two of the absolute most talented basketball players on earth who play the same position in a vastly different way will face off tonight. How will Jokic deal with Wemby’s length? How will Wemby deal with Jokic’s strength? Personally, I’m looking for Joker to fire the three ball tonight. He needs to hit that with consistency and pull Victor out of the lane. Wembanyama is by far the best shot blocker in all of the NBA (an 8′ wingspan will do that) and for Denver, as a team who wants to live in the paint, that spells trouble. The Nuggets have to lean on their best three point shooters (Jokic, Michael Porter Jr., Jamal Murray) to keep the lane clear tonight.

The thing to remember: Overlooking this team cost you

Alright Nuggets. You remember this team? You remember the last game you played against them last season? This is the team you overlooked and that very well may have been the biggest contributing factor to the Nuggets not making the NBA Finals last season. Not being tired, not a slew of injuries, all of that happened and Denver was still just a half away from beating the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 7 and advancing to the Conference Finals. Denver never even would have had to play the Wolves prior to the Conference Finals of course, had they just beaten the Spurs at the end of the regular season and secured the #1 overall seed. The Nuggets came into that game with no energy, overlooked an inferior opponent and proceeded to blow it. Time to get some get back.

The thing to bet: Christian Braun over 0.5 threes (-115)

I know, I know, Christian is in a three point shooting slump. We just need one though. Like I said, Wemby is going to force the Nuggets to take more outside shots with his paint presence and when going through the various player three pointer props, Braun’s falls into the sweetest spot of low volume, high odds (though I once again like Jamal Murray over 2.5 at +105). The gamble is obviously that he’s only made a three pointer in one of his last seven games and has decreased his volume as a result. I think the volume shakes out tonight and it’s as good of night as any for Christian to get his outside shot to start falling again.