It’s already etched in Nuggets lore three years later, an image inextricable from Christmas basketball. It lives in infamy for the 2022 Phoenix Suns, including Cam Johnson.
He could only watch in awe as Aaron Gordon sent Landry Shamet to another realm. Johnson was Shamet’s teammate back then, not Gordon’s. It was the last year of his rookie-scale contract with Phoenix, and he was sidelined by a right meniscus injury but still traveling with the team. “I had knee surgery early November,” Johnson recalls, “so I was working my way back. I was just rehabbing at the time. But I was here.”
Oh, he was here. Not a soul in attendance at Ball Arena that night will forget it. With 27 seconds remaining in overtime and the Nuggets protecting a 124-123 lead, Gordon refused to slow the ball down and make Phoenix decide whether to foul. He ran a one-man fast break instead, catapulting himself over Shamet for the poster of all posters, the greatest dunk of a great dunker’s career, a proper Christmas baptism.
What does Johnson remember from his vantage point on the visiting bench?
“OK, well I remember Landry Shamet was having one heck of a game,” he told The Denver Post on Monday. “And Aaron put a swift end to that. And I’m over there yelling, ‘Charge! Charge! Charge!’ But I knew (it wasn’t). I knew. That was a nasty way to end the game. … Insane.”
Now a Nugget, Johnson hoped to make new Christmas memories this year in the same building — to actually play on the holiday. Instead, in a cruel twist of fate, he went down clutching the same knee in Denver’s final game before Christmas, a loss to Dallas on Tuesday. He was designated by the team as questionable with a knee sprain, but he never returned to the floor. An MRI was in his future.
Injuries, once again, became the story as the Nuggets (21-8) prepared to host the Timberwolves on Christmas (8:30 p.m. MT, ABC/ESPN) in the finale of a five-game NBA slate.
Two starters have already been sidelined all month in Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun, both of whom could return during the team’s seven-game road trip after the holiday. Johnson has been a major factor in holding down the fort. He turned a corner in mid-November after a slow start to the season. He’s shooting 52.3% from the 3-point line in his last 17 games.
In the locker room after a win over Utah on Monday, he was handed a proverbially ugly Christmas sweater depicting cartoon versions of him and Braun. He suggested that he might wear it to the arena on Thursday as his tunnel outfit. ‘Twas the season, until he limped off the court in Dallas.
“In my household, (Christmas was) wake up, gift exchange, eat breakfast, go to grandma’s house, and basketball games all day,” Johnson said. “All day, watching the NBA. So to actually be that, playing out there, knowing you’re playing for people that have those same traditions is pretty special and definitely something I cherish.”
His opinion is shared by a majority of NBA players and coaches, despite the side-effect of Christmas turning into a work day. This is the fourth consecutive year Denver has been deemed important enough by the league to play on the holiday, and the third time in those four years that Ball Arena will host.
“I think it’s really cool,” first-year coach David Adelman said. “It’s kind of like when I was growing up. My father was (coaching) Sacramento, and Sacramento was so out of sight, out of mind for so many years. Like, nobody knew what was going on with the Kings. Then all of a sudden, they were on every Christmas against the Lakers, the Mavs. It’s a sign of respect. And it’s a sign of respect to the things we’ve accomplished over the years.”
The Nuggets are already ahead 2-0 on Minnesota in the season series. Both wins were at Target Center. This will be the Timberwolves’ first visit to Denver since a double-overtime classic in April, when Nikola Jokic recorded the first 60-point triple-double in league history in a loss. His monumental stat line went to waste when Russell Westbrook fouled Minnesota’s Nickeil Alexander-Walker on a corner jump shot at the buzzer.
The Nuggets have still lost five of their last six home games to Minnesota, dating back to the start of their 2024 second-round playoff series.
They’ll be tasked with reversing that trend with limited reinforcements for Jokic and Jamal Murray.
“It’s always great to play on Christmas Day,” Nuggets guard Bruce Brown said. “Christmas shoes, the old-school throwback jerseys that you think about. I mean, the whole world will be watching.”