MILWAUKEE — The Nuggets can start calling these wins Philly Specials.
Missing most of the same players who sat out that overtime upset of the 76ers earlier this month, Denver pulled off another short-handed heist Friday with a 102-100 win over the Bucks. Six rotation players were out at opening tip. Seven were sidelined by the final buzzer. Aaron Gordon reinjured his right hamstring late in the first half, the latest blow to a Nuggets team that has been inching closer to full health.
Gordon was the only regular starter who suited up for the second game of a back-to-back after a win Thursday in Washington. He reached for his right hamstring while bringing the ball up the floor near the end of the half. A team spokesperson said he suffered a hamstring strain and was questionable to return coming out of the break. He was ruled out officially after the third quarter.
“I feel for him,” coach David Adelman said. “He’s optimistic it’s not as bad as it was, the last one. But we won’t know until we get it actually tested.”
Gordon missed 19 consecutive games earlier this season with the same injury. It initially occurred Nov. 21 in Houston. The 30-year-old power forward returned on Jan. 4 and has gradually increased his minutes and role since then.
The Nuggets have generally remained cautious with him on back-to-backs, though. Last weekend, Gordon played 32 minutes on the first night of one in Denver. That was more than Adelman had wanted to play him going into the game, so Denver gave him the next night off.
On Thursday in Washington, Gordon played 33 minutes in a 107-97 win. Why was this situation different enough that the team felt it was safe for him to play on 24 hours of rest in Milwaukee?
“It’s just the stress test. That’s what they go by,” Adelman explained. “And they look at his body and how it responded to yesterday. The response was good. And let’s just be honest. This is not an exact science. These injuries, they can come back any time. Aaron’s had different ones that are similar, the soft tissue stuff. … Nobody made a mistake with him playing. You can only do what you can do. And we have the best people in the world making decisions. They believed that the stress test showed he was good to go. So he did.”
Gordon is facing a lengthy trend of soft tissue injuries. He navigated a calf strain for much of the 2024-25 regular season. He also suffered a left hamstring strain during Game 6 of Denver’s second-round playoff series against Oklahoma City and attempted to play through it in Game 7.
“Some guys, it’s just something that they deal with,” Adelman said, pleading the Fifth on account of not being a doctor when asked if Denver will have to change its approach to back-to-backs with Gordon going forward.
He had vouched for himself after the win in Washington. “I feel good,” he said. “Better than I’ve felt in a long time.”
Gordon was putting in impressive work on Giannis Antetokounmpo before the injury, walling up beleaguered superstar and holding him to eight points in the first half. As it turned out, Antetokounmpo was under attack by his own history of soft tissue injuries. He engineered most of a dramatic fourth-quarterback comeback only to limp off the court with 34 seconds left and finish the game on the bench. He said afterward that he expected to miss another four to six weeks with a calf strain.
Antetokounmpo’s future has been hanging in the balance after months — years, really — of trade speculation. A fog of uncertainty shrouded Milwaukee, where tip time was 8:42 p.m. central time and tip temp was minus 8 degrees outside.
The icy vibes seemed to seep into the Bucks’ play. They floundered into halftime with only 42 points on 15-of-45 shooting. Then the Nuggets expanded their lead without Gordon in the second half, riding a scoring wave from Julian Strawther and sustaining their stout defense. They went up by as many as 23 points with 10:30 to go.
“That’s what we’ve been for the last month, just a very, very strong-willed group of guys. … I think what sums up our whole month is just Julian tonight,” Adelman said. “Out of the rotation. I honestly, before the game, said, ‘Why don’t we just start him?'”
Strawther was lying in bed at the team hotel when he received the news via a cold call from assistant coach John Beckett.
“Anytime you get a little bit of extended time out there, the game kind of slows down the more you’re out there,” he said. “So I was just able to get to my spots. And everybody in here was looking for me and pushing for me to go, which is a great feeling.”
The short-handed Nuggets are not for the weak of stomach. Ten minutes when playing against Antetokounmpo can feel like an eternity, and sure enough, the fourth quarter eventually turned into a showdown between Milwaukee and the clock. Antetokounmpo scored 14 points — 10 of them at the foul line — during a 34-13 run. The Bucks went to a zone, trying to render Denver’s offense stagnant.
The Nuggets took anything they could get. Zeke Nnaji, who assumed Giannis duties after Gordon’s injury, scored four points in the last three minutes and was involved in securing three offensive rebounds that — even when they didn’t result in points — helped bleed the clock for a few extra seconds.
“Yeah, time ran out,” Adelman said in the most concise explanation of how the Nuggets held on. “… Our zone possessions got a little bit ragged at the end. I think the anxiety started to build once they cut into the lead. Before that, when we were up 10, I loved the looks that we got.”
Then with a 99-97 lead and a five-second difference between the shot and game clocks, Adelman used both of his last two timeouts on the same possession. He wanted to see if the Bucks were playing man-to-man or zone defense. Once he saw they were in man, he used the second timeout to draw up a catch for Tim Hardaway Jr. inside the arc. The plan: “for a guy that’s been in the league a long time has a chance to shoot the ball.” Hardaway drew a foul on Bucks center Myles Turner and made both free throws.
Milwaukee answered with a 3-ball to stay alive, but Kyle Kuzma missed a potential game-winner from midcourt as time ran out. Down 6.5 rotation players — not quite seven like in Philadelphia — the Nuggets moved to 9-5 since Nikola Jokic’s knee injury.
“Super-savvy play (by Hardaway), getting that foul,” Strawther said. “We did everything we had to do.”
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