Nuggets prepare to host Rockets twice in crucial games toward eventual NBA playoff seeding

Before the Nuggets faced the Rockets a month ago in Houston first-year head coach David Adelman tried to drive home the importance of the occasion to his players by widening the lens This is a chance to go up - in a three-game series he remembers telling them This is a huge competition In the back of his mind a separate train of thought was interrupting Well he thought unless we don t make the Cup Or maybe we ll play them again in the Cup One year ago Denver s original regular-season schedule included three meetings with the Clippers The Nuggets lost the first two in November hurriedly clinching the season series for Los Angeles But when both teams were among the eliminated from the NBA Cup in its group stage a fourth head-to-head matchup was added The league s only way to account for unknowable variables in the in-season tournament who makes the quarterfinals and who doesn t is to create a schedule with about open days built in Everyone plays two regular-season games during that December stretch every year but the specifics are decided at random at the last minute Those two games might be NBA Cup knockout stage showdowns or they might be replacement games against other eliminated teams The luck of the draw worked out for Denver in The season series ended - Both teams finished - in a fourth-place tie setting up a first-round playoff series between them But the head-to-head tiebreaker had been taken away from the Clippers Contest was played in Denver instead of Los Angeles thanks in part to the randomness That s where the Clippers season ended This time the luck of the draw could give Houston extra life Monday s competition between the Nuggets and Rockets wasn t on the original schedule but it now serves as a fourth meeting between the two Western Conference powers who are within a encounter of each other for second place One head-to-head win is no longer enough to clinch a anticipated tiebreaker for Denver - It s good for them let s just put it that way Adelman mentioned For me you can t control it It is what it is On the flip side we got Sacramento when they re really beat up So you can look at it two different procedures This whole NBA Cup thing we re just all trying to get used to it It s so different than it used to be You just take on the games they give you This is the third year of the NBA Cup s existence which introduced new peculiarities to the league calendar Majority of December has been a lull for the Nuggets They ve played once in the last seven days entering this rematch with Houston a -point rout of Sacramento in their other replacement contest As noted by Adelman the Kings were missing stars Domantas Sabonis and Zach LaVine Out of that lull arrives a pivotal week with Kevin Durant and the Rockets visiting twice They pose a sparse specific challenges that distinguish them from preponderance teams in the league They like to play huge with two centers Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams and two -foot- forwards Durant and Jabari Smith in the starting lineup They play a lot of zone defense like Denver And they pulverize their opponents on the offensive glass the main source of their offensive rating which ranks third in the league I would say the offensive rebounding is the bulk concerning thing Adelman commented Sometimes what Durant does you can t control Obviously we can bring second bodies to him But I think it s the extra possessions because it shortens the competition And that s how they want to play It s almost like playing football if you have a great running competition you have the ball the whole battle That s how they play The Nuggets neutralized the run championship for the first quarter when they visited Texas in November But throughout the night Houston s size and crashing steadily made them bleed out on the glass It wasn t quite enough to cost them in a gritty - win but the margin in second-chance points still ended up being - The Rockets attempted more shots than Denver They re - this season when they take more than their opponent Related Articles How Nuggets are navigating injuries to keep cooking on offense with Peyton Watson Spencer Jones starting Jonas Valanciunas for Dario Saric pact yielding lopsided results for Nuggets Nuggets Podcast Jamal Murray s spectacular start and chances of in the end making an NBA All-Star Contest Nikola Jokic scores Nuggets trounce Kings for th straight road win Even as first-year NBA head coach Nuggets David Adelman finds time to watch games as a fan They re a really talented band Nuggets center Jonas Valanciunas reported Playing physical in the post setting screens So we ve gotta match the physicality We re physical too Indeed Adelman tried playing Valanciunas and Nikola Jokic together for eight minutes during the win in Houston He ll be without Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun again for the next two occasions Peyton Watson is likely to continue shouldering the Durant matchup when the Nuggets are in man-to-man I think we came into that event seeing it as a must-win Watson disclosed Sunday Adelman s pregame observation helped them see it that way Now he ll have to rinse and repeat the same speech twice this week