The Nuggets won at Boston in early January without their best player.
The Celtics will try to even the score potentially without their top scorer on Wednesday night when they visit Denver.
Nikola Jokic was injured when the Nuggets posted a 114-110 win over Boston on Jan. 7. But he’s healthy now and playing at an MVP level despite the team’s stumble out of the All-Star break. He has five triple-doubles in his past seven games and 21 this season, which leads the NBA.
But Denver has lost two of its last three games and has slipped into fourth place in the Western Conference standings with 24 games remaining. The Nuggets have played most of the season without a full lineup and will continue to be without Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson, both of whom are nursing hamstring injuries.
Gordon has ramped up his basketball activity but won’t be active against the Celtics; nor will Watson. The two are the best defenders on a team that has struggled to stop opposing offenses without them in the lineup.
Nuggets coach David Adelman said Gordon took part in most of Tuesday’s practice but didn’t participate in the contact portion. He has missed 35 games this season while dealing with two separate hamstring strains and likely will be out another week at minimum.
“It’s just going to be a day-by-day thing,” Adelman said Tuesday. “Aaron’s been great. He’s understood the process.”
Denver might face a Boston team without leading scorer Jaylen Brown, who sat out Tuesday night’s 97-81 win at Phoenix with a right knee contusion. Brown, who is averaging 29.2 points and 7.0 rebounds this season, also has been crucial defensively.
The Celtics are allowing an average of 108.0 points a game, tops in the Eastern Conference, but have held opponents to less than 90 in the last two games.
Boston is receiving key contributions from Brown, Neemias Queta, Jordan Walsh and Baylor Scheierman on the defensive end.
“Any great team has great role definition,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said recently. “In order for us to be great, we have to have those guys impacting the game at a high level, on the margins. And they do a great job of that, and they take pride in that. So it’s the defense, it’s the rebounding, it’s sprinting to the corners, it’s defending without fouling, it’s offensive rebounds.”
Boston’s surprising success — the team sits in second place in the Eastern Conference — has come without Jayson Tatum, who tore his Achilles in the second round of the playoffs last May. Tatum has generated buzz that he could play before the end of the season, but there has been no plan announced for his return.
The Celtics are rolling without Tatum. They have won four games in a row, nine of their last 10, and are 12-3 since a one-point loss at Detroit on Jan. 19.
