TORONTO — The new year couldn’t arrive soon enough for the Nuggets.
Already down four starters, including three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic, they were hanging on for dear life with a third-quarter lead over the Raptors on Wednesday night. Then, as the final hours of 2025 ticked away, one more cursed injury struck. Jonas Valanciunas abruptly pulled up with a limp between possessions and reached for his right leg — a non-contact calf strain.
He was done, and the Nuggets were missing more than half of their usual rotation for the last 16 minutes of game time in the calendar year. What followed was a New Year’s Eve miracle, a 106-103 win over the Eastern Conference’s fourth-place Raptors.
Bruce Brown missed a pair of free throws that would have clinched the game with two seconds left, and Toronto fired the ball ahead to Brandon Ingram for what looked like an improbable game-tying 3-pointer at the buzzer. It would have stretched the Nuggets (23-10) even thinner for an extra five minutes. Instead, the review process revealed the ball was still on Ingram’s fingers when the clock struck midnight.
The Nuggets escaped Canada with a win in their first game without Jokic, only at the cost of another center. DaRon Holmes finished the game as Denver’s healthiest remaining option at the five.
Face-guarded, double-teamed and trapped throughout the night, Murray patched together 21 points, seven rebounds and six assists in his home country. Valanciunas amassed 17 points (on six field goal attempts), nine rebounds, four assists and three blocks before he limped off as the latest casualty of a highly contagious injury bug going through Denver’s locker room. Watson was the team’s leading scorer with 24 points, hunting shots with the sort of reckless abandon his team needed.
The Nuggets needed contributions from everyone in Adelman’s makeshift eight-man rotation just to carry a 63-54 lead into halftime, and that was before Valanciunas went down. Jalen Pickett started at shooting guard, while Tim Hardaway Jr. slid back to the bench to create the illusion of reinforcements. Four starters were in double figures at the break, and the fifth (Spencer Jones) was a team-best plus-10 despite scoring. He played more minutes than anyone for either side.
Valanciunas set the tone by scoring Denver’s first four points and was impactful across the board in his first nine-minute stint, which ended when he picked up his second foul. As he took his seat, he had already supplied eight points, six boards, two assists, a steal and a block. He was replaced by DaRon Holmes II, who joined forces with Jones in the frontcourt for the next seven minutes.
It was a rag-tag duo — one player on a two-way contract, another who’s on a standard rookie deal but has spent most of his season developing in the G League. Yet they made it work together, winning their first-half minutes together by three. Denver’s limited sources of shot creation when Murray isn’t on the court will be a major topic for the next month, so Holmes’ confidence driving and kicking multiple times — including once to assist a Pickett 3-pointer — was an important variable.
Holmes also knocked down a corner three of his own and delivered a bruising screen to free up Bruce Brown for a floater, a play that kick-started a 5-0 mini-run without Murray or Valanciunas in the game. Those small surges of momentum will be crucial for a team trying to survive without so much talent. After Brown’s floater, Jones forced a live-ball turnover and found Hardaway in transition for a side-step three, forcing a Toronto timeout.
The Raptors made runs throughout the night but couldn’t find consistent rhythm. Denver survived a 13-1 push to start the second half and a 9-0 run early in the fourth quarter, both of which gave Toronto brief leads.
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The Nuggets went ice cold in the fourth. But so did their hosts. Toronto missed 15 of its last 17 shots from the field. The highlight, game-saving plays for Denver were of the hustle variety, such as Watson’s diving loose-ball rebound to draw a foul on the ground with 1:46 to go.
Watson missed a dunk, and Holmes was off-target on a 3-pointer that would have given the Nuggets a two-possession lead in the last minute, but after the Raptors cut it to 102-101, Jones knocked down a pair of high-pressure free throws with 19.5 seconds left. Then the Nuggets inbounded the ball over the top to Murray for a lead-extending layup with 13.7 seconds to go, eventually setting up Ingram’s close-but-no-cigar heave.
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