Two of the best teams in the NBA masqueraded as tankers on the last Friday of the season.
In this corner: the first-place Oklahoma City Thunder, resting nine rotation players including the reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Defensive Player of the Year candidate Chet Holmgren and 2025 All-NBA wing Jalen Williams. Their absences came as no surprise. With two games left, the Thunder had already clinched the best record in the league and home-court advantage in any playoff series. There was nothing left to play for — all risk, no reward. In fact, OKC was incentivized to lose to the Nuggets and shepherd them to the opposite side of the playoff bracket as a No. 3 seed. That way, the defending champs would only have to face one of the Nuggets or Spurs in a hypothetical path to the NBA Finals.
In the other corner: third-place Denver, minus the entire starting lineup. Offered a symbolic handshake agreement by OKC avoid each other until the Western Conference Finals, the Nuggets threw a late-breaking curveball instead. Most of their normal rotation would also be sitting out, coach David Adelman announced 90 minutes before tip.
The official injury report designations: Nikola Jokic out for right wrist injury management. Jamal Murray out for right shoulder impingement. Aaron Gordon out for right hamstring injury management. Cam Johnson out for right ankle injury management. Christian Braun out for left ankle injury management and a right hip flexor strain.
“What’s on the injury report is what they’re out with,” Adelman said. “They’re dealing with a lot more than that physically, not to mention some of the soft tissue stuff. Scary kinds of injuries. … ‘Hey, we’re the three-seed, but we don’t have three starters’ — it doesn’t sound like a great solution.”
Denver’s junior-varsity roster pulled away late for a 127-107 victory nonetheless, clinching home-court advantage in the first round. Oklahoma City escaped with the outcome it wanted. But the Nuggets’ unexpected lineup decision will loom into Sunday evening, when they close out the regular season at San Antonio.
Their situation is simple now.
The Nuggets will be the No. 3 seed and face Minnesota if they beat San Antonio or if the Lakers lose to Utah in a coinciding game. San Antonio would be Denver’s likely second-round opponent.
The Nuggets will be the No. 4 seed and face Houston if they lose to San Antonio and the Lakers beat Utah. Oklahoma City would be Denver’s likely second-round opponent.
Utah will be trying to lose Sunday for draft lottery purposes. The Lakers will be heavily favored, even without Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves.
That leaves Denver at San Antonio as the major swing game of the night for seeding.
So what exactly do the Nuggets want here? Their decision to rest all five starters Friday signaled a desire to avoid Minnesota, fall to fourth place and set up an earlier OKC series, leaving people around the NBA puzzled. But the situation is at least nuanced enough that it depends who you ask. Several team sources told The Denver Post they would personally prefer to compete for the No. 3 seed. Others were torn on which potential path would be more advantageous between Minnesota-San Antonio and Houston-Oklahoma City. Ultimately, the lineup conversation Friday went upstairs beyond the coaching staff, according to two of those sources.
“The matchups with those teams, I’ll be honest, there’s so much unknown. I think people need to calm down with ‘Let’s play the Lakers,’” Nuggets head coach David Adelman said, before Los Angeles was mathematically ruled out as a possible first-round opponent late Friday night. “If Luka comes back and feels good, do you want to play Luka Doncic? Like, I think you’re messing with the game when you think that.
“Us and Minnesota, it’s been a crazy back-and-forth over the years. They swept us last year, but then we beat them three out of four this year. We always know it’s competitive with them. They’ve given us issues. We’ve given them issues. And then obviously Houston, I mean, they’re playing so well right now. … So there’s no good opponent in my opinion. I think you just have to play it out with decisions that are best for your team, and we feel like tonight, this is the best decision.”
The Nuggets have had internal conversations about the matchup scenarios, of course. That’s normal for a contender in a situation like this.
Those conversations, if you’re to believe the team’s framing, revealed a lot of gray area. And in fairness to that framing, any two Nuggets fans sitting in a bar could have a reasonable pros-and-cons debate about this topic.
Is Houston a more palatable matchup than a familiar rival like Minnesota in the first round? Maybe, but Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels have also been dealing with injuries recently. Vibes have been off with the Wolves.
If Oklahoma City is considered a tougher opponent than the inexperienced Spurs, wouldn’t it be prudent to land on San Antonio’s side of the bracket and stay away from OKC as long as possible? Maybe, but on the other hand, playing the Thunder sooner — with fewer miles on Aaron Gordon’s hamstring in particular — theoretically gives you a better chance of starting and finishing that series with a healthy team.
Or does it even matter when you play OKC and when you play San Antonio, if you’re expecting you’ll have to face both eventually anyway? Does that mean decisions should be made with only the first-round opponent in mind? Or if you’re a “championship or bust” team, as Julian Strawther put it Friday, shouldn’t you be confident you’ll win the first-round series regardless of the opponent and therefore make these decisions based on later rounds?
There isn’t necessarily a right answer to any of these questions.
Only one variable was completely unambiguous: Nothing else matters if the roster isn’t healthy. So injury avoidance was treated as a higher priority than seeding, as multiple team sources rationalized to The Post.
Still, Denver’s willingness to risk losing Friday’s game on paper — forget for a moment that the players refused to punt it in actuality — suggested at least some degree of organizational wariness about the Timberwolves, even if nobody wanted to admit it. Denver has already faced them twice in the last three postseasons. Minnesota has gone farther in the playoffs than Denver in back-to-back years.
Assuming the Nuggets rest most of their starters again on Sunday, that outside perception will only be amplified.
Adding to the intrigue, San Antonio is now incentivized to beat the Nuggets for the same reason Oklahoma City was incentivized to lose to them. If Denver falls to fourth place, the Spurs will ensure that they only have to play one of Denver or OKC in the playoffs. Is that a worthwhile reason for them to play their starters when they’re already locked in as the No. 2 seed? Even if Victor Wembanyama rests, which seems likely, San Antonio can roll out a competitive lineup spearheaded by one of the best backcourts in the league.
Then there’s Jokic, who still hasn’t met the 65-game minimum to qualify for awards such as MVP and All-NBA. He has to play at least 15 minutes Sunday if he wants to appear on ballots. He’s expected to play, one team source said, but the final decision on his status will include input from both him and team ownership.
“Obviously, the success in the playoffs matters more than anything else. But this rule stares at us right now,” Adelman said. “So we’ve gotta make a proper decision, and we need to go in there with a real plan. … Either it is those minutes, or we say let’s just move on.”
Of course, if Jokic does play even 15 minutes, the Nuggets will be substantially increasing their chances of leaving San Antonio with a win. And that might not be what everyone in the building wants.
Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.
