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Blazers will be motivated to win. They are tied with the Lakers for 6th. Win and they stay out of the play-in games. The Lakers are on the road at New Orleans.

Are the Nuggets going to play to win? Or are they going to play to avoid injury? Will coach play the starters their usually allotment of minutes or will he use his bench more?

We've beaten them twice this year but both games were close.

If we stick with our pattern, we should win the first quarter and then we shall see what happens.

Both times we've beaten them we had Murray so this will be a different game.

Per Mike Singer: Jokic will play, as will the starters, but they won't play huge minutes. My guess is around 25 or so like last game.

The Nuggets could play with more urgency... but the Blazers are also just hitting everything right now.

That's 5 straight games that Jokic hasn't made a 3. He didn't attempt one in the last game but he's now 0-11. I like that the Nuggets didn't completely throw in the towel.

I'm just ready to pull the starters, remember Murray was injured in the final, irrelevant mins of the GSW game

Actually expected because of the need of the TBlazer, the game surprising me is the DAL game.

The effort is way off and to be expected. Looks more like a practice.

Blazers it is. Despite how this game turned out, Blazers were always the most favorable matchup for the Nuggets. Plus Nuggets get homecourt.

Eh, I mostly wish they had played to win. At least they threw the game in semi-honorable fashion by having their customary starting five log at least a few minutes. But man, I'm worried about this backcourt now that the playoffs are here, Murray is out, and Barton is nowhere to be seen.

longtallbrad wrote:Eh, I mostly wish they had played to win. At least they threw the game in semi-honorable fashion by having their customary starting five log at least a few minutes. But man, I'm worried about this backcourt now that the playoffs are here, Murray is out, and Barton is nowhere to be seen.

Barton's probably going to be out until the 2nd round, and even then he'll be on a minutes restriction. Same goes for PJ. Nuggets are just going to have to figure out how to play without them.