After a combined 11-game absence, the Nuggets are finally getting one of their centers back from injury on Thursday night as Jonas Valanciunas will make his return to the lineup to face the Wizards in Washington. Now, obviously, much more has been made of the other missing center, Nikola Jokic, but getting JV back in the lineup is huge.
Without Jokic and Val, the Nuggets have been obliterated on the glass, becoming the worst rebounding team in the league over that stretch. They’ve been forced to rely on Zeke Nnaji and DaRon Holmes, while asking players like Aaron Gordon, Spencer Jones, and Peyton Watson to play big, so to speak.
Valanciunas certainly won’t bring you everything that Jokic will, but he is a towering, hulking presence down low and can clean up on the glass. Adding him back into the rotation should make a massive impact immediately.
Oddly, the Nuggets are fairly well-suited to make up for what the Joker does in other areas; the offense has still been good, and Jamal Murray, Watson, and others have been able to step up on that end. But the only failsafe on the roster for Jokic’s rebounding was Valanciunas. For them to go down with injuries at the same time was about as bad of luck as you could imagine.
Valanciunas will be on minutes restriction Thursday night
The Nuggets will add Valanciunas back into the starting lineup right away, but David Adelman did state that he’ll have a minutes restriction on Thursday night. Still, it’s hard to overstate how much of a difference even 15-20 minutes of Big Val should make.
Jokic suffered his knee injury on December 29th, and in their first game without him, the Nuggets saw Valanciunas go down with a calf injury on December 31st. Neither big man has played a single minute so far in January, and the team has survived okay, going 6-5 without a true center.
But it has been catching up to them in recent games as they’ve lost in ugly fashion to the Hornets and Lakers at home in their past two outings. On both occasions, they lost the rebounding battle by over 20, and by the end of each game, controlling the glass felt almost hopeless.
With Valanciunas returning on Thursday night, that should change right away, and the Nuggets should be able to get back on track. With any luck, we’ll get a positive update on the Joker (not to mention Cam Johnson and Christian Braun), and they’ll be firing on all cylinders in no time.