By about the fourth hour on the tarmac at the end of the third full day, Ognjen Stojakovic’s mind was far from Memphis. He could have flown home to Serbia and back, he realized, in the time the Nuggets had been stranded in a southern snowstorm.
Their 2025-26 season has been littered with injury landmines and other booby traps hidden in the walls of Ball Arena. If they’re able to snatch the Larry O’Brien Trophy, a boulder might chase them through the streets of Denver on their parade route.
Their most recent obstacle was the weather. Originally scheduled to fly into Memphis last Saturday, play a matinee game Sunday, then fly home immediately afterward, the team ended up stuck in the Tennessee city for an entire weekend getaway. Without ever playing a game.
“We know Memphis well now,” coach David Adelman said in his signature dry tone. “We know it in the snow. We know it in the heat. We know the hotel well. I know where to go there. Spent a lot of time there. So I have an expectation of going back there and having a great time.”
The Nuggets will be back on March 18 for what they hope will be a much shorter visit to make up their postponed game against the Grizzlies. In the meantime, at least they have the memories of last weekend. The warm, fuzzy memories.
“It was just a guys gathering for the weekend,” Jonas Valanciunas joked. “… We killed the time.”
As winter storms threatened huge swaths of the country, the Nuggets tried to get ahead of the weather by changing their travel plans out of Milwaukee. They flew to Memphis late last Friday night after a win over the Bucks instead of following their original itinerary, which was to spend that night in Wisconsin.
On Saturday, some of the team went to the gym for player development work in Memphis. It was a typical, casual off day between games. No formal practice.
“Then it really froze,” Adelman said. “Then it became like, skeleton crew everywhere. Not a lot of places open. So Sunday was a tough one. … By the time the game was canceled, the city is frozen and there’s nobody at the arena.”
And because it was an afternoon game, Denver had no shootaround plans for the morning. Players hadn’t been on their feet. They wouldn’t be for the rest of the day after the postponement, which was announced about three hours before tip.
For Denver sports fans, that cleared the schedule for uninterrupted Broncos playoff consumption. For the Nuggets, it set up a free-for-all. Some players got together to watch the AFC and NFC title games at the team hotel together. Some told The Denver Post they ventured out into the cold — it wasn’t actually that snowy by Colorado standards — and found bars around Beale Street where they could post up. Most were closed. Memphis, which is not exactly considered a favorite travel destination for NBA teams in the first place, had turned into a complete ghost town.
“Went to a little cafe that was open down the street,” Julian Strawther said. “Walked over there in the snow.”
“Lot of video games,” Jamal Murray added. “I think some guys watched some football. I don’t really watch football. So I just stayed in my room.”
“In the South, it’s just the infrastructure isn’t (prepared for snow). And it makes sense,” Adelman said. “Why would they be ready for a snowstorm or an ice storm? So it just was one of those things you’ll remember in the NBA years from now.”
Dreams of an efficient return to Denver became nightmares. At first, the Nuggets hoped they would be able to fly out of Memphis on Sunday night as planned. But fights were grounded around the country. Elsewhere in the NBA, the Mavericks were stuck in Dallas, tardy to a game in Milwaukee that was eventually postponed.
“It was good for (the players) to be off their feet. There’s no question about that. I just think the mental part of it was really hard,” Adelman said. “We kept giving them updates that we were gonna leave. And then that update would turn into an hour later, and then a day later, then an hour later. On and on and on.”
“I was on Madden for 20 hours,” Strawther said.
The Nuggets finally bused to the airport on Monday afternoon, arriving at 2 p.m. local time. Parked planes needed to be de-iced, though. Another four hours were spent sitting on the plane, waiting. Waiting.
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“We didn’t move (all weekend),” Murray said. “And then we came back into Denver and faced a really good team at altitude.”
They finally landed safely at 7 p.m. MT Monday, after more than 60 hours in Memphis and a 0-0 record to show for it.
Then it was just one more hour of driving to get home from Denver International Airport.
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