After taking care of business on Wednesday night against the Timberwolves, the Denver Nuggets control their own destiny and can win the Western Conference by getting a victory in each of their final two games of the regular season.
But their lead in the conference over the Wolves and Thunder remains just one game, so any slip up and they could still fall all the way to third place. We've established that gaining the one seed isn’t the only thing that matters, but it would still be nice to have home court advantage throughout the Western Conference playoffs, especially at this point when it would just include winning games over the lowly Spurs and Grizzlies to close the season.
These are obviously both winnable games for the Nuggets. It really just depends on how badly the team wants it and how hard they’re willing to push if at all. It starts on Friday night when they face the Spurs and Victor Wembanyama.
The rookie sensation has already played a couple of instant classics against the Nuggets and big man Nikola Jokić, and it looks like this may be a center rivalry in the West for many years to come, but will we see them face off on Friday night?
Nuggets injury report.
It looks like the Nuggets will be cautious with most of their starters and take this right up to the wire. Jokic (hip), Jamal Murray (knee), Aaron Gordon (foot), Michael Porter Junior (Quad), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (shoulder), and Zeke Nnaji (adductor) are all listed as 'Probable' for Friday night as expected, but it would certainly not be surprising if one or more sits out just to get some extra rest. Vlatko Cancar (knee) remains out.
Spurs injury report
The good news for this matchup is that Victor Wembanyama is completely off the injury report and will be in action. But it's a skeleton crew beyond that. Keldon Johnson (foot), Dominick Barlow (knee), Charles Bassey (ACL), Cedi Osman (ankle), Jeremy Sochan (ankle), and Devin Vassell (foot) are all listed as 'Out' for Friday night.
Betting odds
The Nuggets are currently listed as 12.5 point road favorites and the game has a total of 222.5 points.