RealGM

Happy to see Jamal Murray is back, otherwise, with Porter joins injury list, in-form Portland would be hard to solve.

Lillard playing last two weeks basketball of his life, so we need Murray to make some balance on backcourt positions.

Is Murray going to be 100%? Never mind - he plays solid even when injured!

Jokic - Grant - Barton - Craig - Murray just might be a good lineup against Portland. Defense will be vital against Lillard & McCollum. Murray works hard at defense, usually. That's Craig's calling card. When Barton faces a serious challenge he sometimes takes a serious approach and I'm hoping that will happen tonight. Jokic will plug the middle (and get burned by drive-bys when he's switched outside) and Grant will help.

The key to this game is, of course, to out-score Portland because you aren't going to shut them down. Stopping Lillard & McCollum isn't vital. I'd guess that if they score less than 50 points combined, we will win.

Jokic was super hot in the first half, but unlike in Detroit, Malone didn't shut down him and limited on 14 minutes but even prolonged his playing time on near 20 minutes. Jokic is 21-10-5 already on halftime, and I guess only blowout wins will prevent him to achieve some Chamberlain-like monstrous triple-double. Our defense was equally impressive like Jokic offense in the first half, we limited hottest backcourt duo on miserable 7-24 shooting, so Portland scored only 38 points and just 10 in the whole 2nd quarter.

Considering the streak Lillard has been on, this is a NICE defensive victory! Jokic one assist away from another TD but at least gets some well-deserved rest before going to UTH for ANOTHER B2B...(does the NBA just HATE the Nuggets ??)

Confess I first checked the score to decide if I am going to watch later. I read Grant was injured. So if I am counting right- Plums out, Juancho and Vanderbilt traded, Millsap out, Grant out, coming players not available yet, MPJ questionable. That leaves us with eight healthy players, one questionable. So if MPJ won't play our tallest guys are Jokič, then... Čančar who played 16 minutes this season, Torey Craig and PG Dozier? Going to play Rudy Gobert?

I don't think we make this trade if we don't have some other in place..

1st quarter - Great offense
2nd quarter - Great defense

2nd half - played them even

Lots of motion, especially in the first half - 25 FTs is a nice indicator

Jokic had another great game - as we always expect
Hernangomez said farewell with 11 rebounds and 2 blocks - respect and best wishes
Beasley had some nice shots and a couple of really nice drives and some nice defense - respect and hoping Minnesota gives him a shot to play 30 mpg