Happenstance occasionally throws an interesting curveball.
The Nuggets and Phoenix are plenty familiar. They could well end up meeting in the early part of the NBA Playoffs and if they do, it’ll be just that. The principals. The drama. The offensive firepower.
It’ll all look familiar with a dose of Bradley Beal thrown in.
It will also be the first time since that barnburner of a second-round series last spring, however, that the sides see each other at full strength.
That much became clear Wednesday night when Denver point guard Jamal Murray and Phoenix center Jusef Nurkic were ruled out for the rubber match of the three-game season series. Suns star Devin Booker missed the first two meetings of the year — a December Nuggets win and a Phoenix overtime victory earlier this month.
The teams didn’t set out to set it up this way, where neither side gets a look at the fully armed version of the other. But it’s interesting nonetheless.
“We know how talented they are offensively,” Malone said. “Devin Booker in transition, you have to pick him up at the four-point line. We’ve got guys like Eric Gordon we haven’t even talked about. Grayson Allen, Devin Booker, Kevin Durant who have four-point line ability. So you’ve got to stretch in transition.”
This is the time of year teams might find the good in experimenting, though the Nuggets have already played one extended stretch without Murray early in the season.
Malone wasn’t biting on the idea that moving pieces around with 10 games to go in the regular season is ideal.
“Just continue to play the way we’ve been playing,” Malone said. “If experimenting means trying different guys out, you can always give that a look. That was what was unique about our last game the other night against Memphis with injuries: We had a chance to play a lot of guys that maybe had not played and that was good to see what guys are capable of.
“We’ll do what we do and hopefully we can continue to move in the right direction.”
Malone by now knows what he has and knows how to mix and match for a game or two at a time. Still, a long playoff run comes with unexpected twists and turns, so a guy like Collin Gillespie draws the coach’s attention when he gets a shot.
“I have a ton of confidence in Collin. He’s a young kid that’s been through so much and has done whatever we ask him to do,” Malone said. “We wanted him to get healthy and recover from that horrific injury he suffered after his initial summer league. Then this year, ‘Hey, go to the G-League.’ He went down there, he averaged a triple-double and was an All-Star.
“It seems like every time we throw him out there in meaningful minutes he’s never afraid. He’s a tough kid, he’s got balls, he’s going to compete and he’s not going to be perfect, but nobody’s perfect. Nikola’s not perfect. For Collin Gillespie, man, I think he has the entire confidence of the entire locker room because of how tough he is. He scraps.”
Should these teams meet in the playoffs, they’ll look different than the regular-season matchups. Unless there’s another curveball ahead. That makes now the time to get prepared.
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