The Nuggets are back! When and how to watch Friday night's NBA Summer League game
By Ben Handler
Our long national nightmare is over as the Denver Nuggets finally return to action on Friday night. Okay, it’s not exactly the Nuggets that you may be used to, and this certainly won’t be the squad we last saw, falling to the Timberwolves in the second round of the NBA playoffs.
But it’s the next best thing, it’s the NBA’s Las Vegas Summer League which tips off Friday, July 12th. All 30 NBA teams will be in action, including the Nuggets. The team announced their roster recently and it’s littered with promising young players. The headliners are Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett, and rookie DaRon Holmes II.
Nuggets take the court Friday night at 8 PM MDT
But truly, this is a great opportunity for anyone on the roster to prove themselves and carve out a real role for the team going forward. The team will first take the floor on Friday night against the Clippers at 8 PM MDT, live from Las Vegas. It will be the final game of night one and it can be seen on NBATV or streaming on ESPN+.
It should be fun to get a look at all of these young players, many who have big expectations coming into this season. It will also be the first look at a handful of guys in a Nuggets uniform, including Holmes and multiple players signed to 2-way and exhibit-10 deals. This can be viewed as an audition and an opportunity for players to earn their way onto the Nuggets (or another NBA team).
Summer League a huge opportunity for young players
This may not exactly be enough to wash out the bad taste from Nuggets fans’ mouths from the playoff loss to Minnesota, or losing KCP this offseason, but it’s at least a start. And with this start comes hope. This is a fun time of year for fans. We get to go crazy over random players who may never factor into real NBA games and convince ourselves they are stars in the making.
But it’s also a time to watch real prospects and see if they can separate themselves from the pack. The Nuggets have lost a lot of depth the past few offseasons and they are counting on a lot of these young players in a big way. Let’s see what they can do.
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