He playing 20 minutes then mystery injury happens

At this point it seems like the 65 game rule is going to be used to keep gambling wagers in chaos until the end.

Everybody who bet Wemby DPOY was shitting bricks until yesterday. What was a sure lock bet turned into a big deal. Some folks were trying to get lucky and bet Barnes or Duren for DPOY. Just in case

Anybody who bet Jokic all NBA is in purgatory limbo shitting those same bricks. Please just play 20 minutes in the last hame pls pls.

Nah he’s putting up 18/13/13 in 21 minutes

He will play LOL At least that game will qualify him for the 1st all NBA team award LOL

It really wouldn’t be considering he rushed his return from injury precisely so he’d have enough games to qualify

This narrative that he doesn’t care about shit needs to end lol

Just have Jokic give all-star game energy

He’s been clearly trying to get to 65

As a Nuggets fan I genuinely have zero preference. Health is way more important than the three.

The first path imo is better. Easier first round match so youre less beat up going into the second round, and then face the thunder where both teams have fresh legs. If you manage to get to the conference finals, yeah youre beat up, but most of the main spurs players dont have playoff experience and you hope they either get upset somewhere (unlikely), or at least pushed harder by the time they get to the wcf.

The other path is a more annoying first round matchup, into a spurs team that is less battered, into a thunder team that got to coast through an 8 seed and whoever makes it out of the lakers/rockets so likely coasted through that series too. Like, the first option looks significantly better than the second.

I’m sure being rested is a big part of it too, but people are underselling how much better the 4th seed path is.

Maybe I’m biased but the 3-seed path feels significantly harder to me than the 4-seed path.

The Wolves are (in my potentially biased opinion) SIGNIFICANTLY tougher than the Rockets. I get Houston is the higher seed, but the squad they have heading into the playoffs lacks a PG, lacks a true center, has a bunch of one-way players (either defenders who can’t shoot or shooters who can’t defend), and has some bad chemistry if things go sideways. Meanwhile, Minnesota is getting healthy and goes at least 7 deep of 2-way players (with 3-4 more guys potentially being decent playoff players). Denver would still be favored against Minnesota, but I think losing is at least a possibility in that series and a long, tough series feels almost guaranteed, whereas I highly doubt Houston would challenge Denver much (I’d bet it only goes 5, and I’d be shocked if it even went 7).

Then, if they come out of that 3-6 series, they’ll be up against San Antonio for another grueling series. Again, I’d actually probably pick Denver, but it’s far from a guarantee and likely goes long. Then, if they come out of the ²⁄₃ side of the bracket, they’d almost certainly be up a fresh OKC squad who rolled through 2 weak opponents. Playing OKC is hard enough, but doing so after 12+ tough playoff games after a pretty high-effort finish to the season doesn’t feel like a great option. Again, Denver COULD do it, but it feels especially hard.

But if they slide into 4 and quickly dispatch of the Rockets, they could play OKC on relatively equal footing: pretty well rested and probably at their healthiest. I’d bet that improves their odds by a not-insignificant margin. And while I think it’s an almost guarantee that OKC makes it out of a non-Denver bracket, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to San Antonio stub their toe along the way — they’re super inexperienced and Wemby typically averages like 30 minutes a game, so you have to wonder how he’ll hold up playing close to 40 every other day for multiple weeks. Too, even if San Antonio does make it, I’d feel more comfortable in Denver knocking them out in the WCF than OKC.

Put simply, I think OKC-SA-Denver-Minnesota are easily the 4 best teams in the West playoffs. If Denver gets the 3-seed, they play all 3 of them in a row, with the toughest one at the end.

yeah if they want to make the finals, they have to likely play okc and sa at some point. and they clearly prefer the rockets to the twolves for the first round

I dont want to play TWolves in the first

But id rather face OKC in the 2nd.

If they beat up on someone and get hella rest and HCA in round 3 after we finish up a 7 game series… thats advantage we cant afford to lose.

So im good either way, too.

This is it. They probably assume they’ll have to play both at some point and just want to be healthy.

I think it’s about the brackets. Regardless of who’s worse in wcf between okc or spurs, you’re taking spurs who just came off of a physical Minnesota series over okc who just came off of a rockets series

I guess they would rather play Minnesota in the WCF instead of the first round if they get past OKC.

They will have to go through OKC either way, hope LA or Minny can knock off Spurs to make an easier path.

Why are they only now resting their guys

Finally someone gets it

Actually only needs 15 to qualify

I’ll never forgot the gash that fucker gave Joker’s arm back when he was in Charlotte. Could actually see the skin fly off Jokić’s arm in the slow mo replay. Biyombo needs to go the Jared McCain school of manicures.

I can’t imagine San Antonio purposely wants to play Denver and OKC, so they have no incentive to try to lose, and if anything, probably will happily take the lakers in their bracket instead of Denver.

Last year during a preseason game I saw jokic play a game where I swear he never jumped or ran.  Like he was doing a bit if he could play a game without having both feet leave the ground.  He might break that out tomorrow. 

I feel like the Nuggets will be less likely to win WITH Jokic playing because he will 100% be playing to meet the 65 game criteria and coast out there. I’d be suprised if he contested a single shot on D.

He usually brings poor effort against tanking teams or when playing for nothing, which is why you always see the Nuggets getting in tight games against teams they should be blowing out on paper

I understand the football and basketball reasons but what’s with opening day for baseball ?

In 2015 I wanted to see Tom Brady vs Peyton Manning and paid 330 for the worst ticket in the stadium since I figured it might be the last time they played each other.

Peyton got injured the game before and I got Brock Osweiler. Ticket prices plummeted and my brother paid like 180 a ticket for much better seats :(

Still an awesome game though.

Depends on the teams tbh. Stuff like the tank bowl between Utah and Memphis yesterday is actually hilarious and worth the money. But it’s definitely a bad idea to buy tickets for the last game of a contending team.

Ya I’ve went to multiple end of season games before the 65 game rule and missed the star. Giannis dnp the day of the game, Shai didnt play a game I went to go see , and like 2 other times stars I went to see didn’t play in the last like 10 years smh. I always buy early enough where they’re not out but then they always sit

I think we just don’t care at this point. HOU or MIN, SAS and OKC in some order, doesn’t matter which

Denver sitting out starters tomorrow coz they want 2 things:

1. Houston is more beatable than minny.

2. Either path they will play OKC and Spurs. So just be healthy.

They are not avoiding the Wolves. They just want the Rockets who is very flawed. Much easier for them. Maybe in 5 games? Then they’ll be fresh for the OKC series.

The Lakers control their own destiny for claiming the 4th seed and playing Houston instead of Minnesota.

Would be a heck of a job pulling that one off considering they are playing the Jazz lol

I think the Lakers are trying to avoid OKC so they’ll likely try to win vs the jazz.

They just want what everyone else wants: Wolves / Nuggets western conference finals.

Control their own destiny for going down in seeds 😂

It makes zero sense to risk Wemby in this game.

Barnes needs to score enough points to average 10 for the season. Everything else is whatever.

“You just made those names up!”

Exactly guys. Exactly. 

Probably this, no matter what people say of current wolves, they still somehow always exhaust is like crazy and can absolutely steal games from us

Everyone is talking about the Nuggets’ perspective, but I honestly believe that they see little difference and are mostly focused on staying heathy

On the other hand, it is a huge difference for the Spurs (and for the Thunder)

Nuggets doing everything they can to keep the “no defending champ has made it out of round 2 since 2019” streak alive.

It is a completely different situation. Thunder were incentivized to lose that game and rested basically the entire rotation, and the Nuggets rest decision wasn’t made until after that was announced taking it into account.

Spurs at least have a reason to win and we’re not sure how much of the rotation is resting tomorrow.

Yeah because it’s not like we were intentionally trying to lose that game either 😭

Reddit loves to freak out about things

We are playing them

is everyone else listed as available? like fox, champagnie, etc

I wonder if it depended on whether or not Denver took it seriously

These redditors turn into basketball experts when their teams shit the bed

Wemby/Vassell/Castle all listed as questionable.

If they all play Spurs win but if they don’t this game might have shenanigans.

To be fair, they might just want to play Getoffmydickerson. The signs fans could make when playing the Rockets in a playoff series could be epic.

What? Why?

I mean, looking at our season to date, I can’t blame them. Just play Jokic his 15 mins and see what happens.

Gonna be funny as hell when we lose this and the Lakers lose to Utah or something.

He will 100% play. He cares way more about those awards than he would ever admit

Why he’s questionable lol

He traveled to san antonio unlike the other guys, he’s definitely playing barring anything unexpected

Enjoy the 2nd round exit

Yeah obviously OKC is the favorite.

I meant the tradeoff between them and the Spurs may not be large in their mind.

Regardless, I think Denver just wants to be healthy.

No shame in being afraid of playoff Bones.