What have the Nuggets done to deserve this kind of luck? The hits keep on coming. Peyton Watson has been diagnosed with a grade 2 left hamstring strain and is expected to miss extended timeper a tweet from the Athletic's Tony Jones.
P-Wat has been perhaps the team's biggest bright spot this season. He started the year as someone the franchise thought would play off the bench. Now, he's the Nuggets' legitimate third star and scoring option. His above-average defense and scoring ability will be sorely missed in the lineup.
The extended absence could also hurt Watson in the contact department. He's expected to receive a large offer as a restricted free agent that the Nuggets can now hopefully match, thanks to their last-minute deadline deal, salary-dump of Hunter Tyson.
He joins Aaron Gordon and Cameron Johnson on the sidelines in the ever-rotating game of musical chairs at the end of the bench. At least Christian Braun is back, and if his minutes are any indication -- 43 in his last game -- he should be ready to shoulder a full load. But he lacks the same explosiveness on offense that Watson has been displaying, leaving yet another hole for head coach David Adelman to plug.
David Adelman has more adjustments to make
I'm sure he's used it by now, but Adelman's got to be tired of making constant adjustments to the rotations he's been putting together. It seems like a nightly occurrence at this point. Nobody could blame him even if he were tired of the constant juggling, but he's patiently been adjusting game in and game out since late October and has the Nuggets still in the three spot out West.
That level of success in the face of adversity is certainly building character that's going to be huge for the success of the team later in the season. The silver lining has always been that the bench is getting more game action than anyone could have imagined before the season started. Extra reps at the mid-point of the season make for better execution later in the playoffs.
Grade 2 injuries typically take 4-8 weeks to heal. P-Wat should be back around the start of April, on a worst-case scenario. That's still plenty of time to get back into a rhythm and gel with the rest of the team, and just in time for him to make a case for some extra RFA cash, too.