Denver Gazette beat writer Vinny Benedetto takes you around the NBA and inside the Nuggets locker room:

NBA Insider

Trade buzz has been decreased by a string of injuries.

Many of the biggest names potentially on the market – including Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ja Morant and Jonathan Kuminga – are injured and will not return before the Feb. 5 deadline. While they could still be moved, it makes a quiet deadline across the league more likely. The Nuggets’ string of injuries has made it difficult to truly assess where the team is at less than two weeks before the deadline, but there’s no evidence a big move is needed.

Here are Denver’s options ranked from most to least likely:

Shed salary

The Nuggets are $402,059 over the luxury tax threshold, according to Spotrac. Getting a team to take on the contracts of Zeke Nnaji ($8.2 million) or a player still on their rookie contracts like DaRon Holmes II, Julian Strawther, Hunter Tyson or Jalen Pickett will likely require some draft compensation, which Denver doesn’t have a lot to offer. Holmes is the only player on a rookie contract making more than $3 million this season. Ducking the tax would make sense with the roster and luxury-tax bill getting increasingly expensive in the coming years and a decision on Peyton Watson’s future in Denver looming this summer.

Stay put

Injuries have left the Nuggets without many truly disposable players. If Denver is still going to be shorthanded for the foreseeable future, retaining the players who have proven to be valuable might make the most sense. Nnaji has been elevated in the rotation in recent weeks and the uncertainty surrounding Gordon’s latest hamstring injury could leave Denver short on the inside if Denver is able to swing a trade for the only contract between $5 and $10 million. If teams are reluctant to take Denver’s little draft compensation, which also figure to be late-round picks in a deal, this is by far the most likely scenario.

Make a big swing

The only reason to make a big deal now is if Watson makes it clear he wants to continue his career elsewhere, and Denver would rather sell high than risk losing him for nothing in the offseason. There’s been no indication that’s been the case, and as a restricted free agent, the choice isn’t really Watson’s to make just yet. The few times this season the Nuggets have been at or near full strength, they’ve proven to be real contenders. This is by far the least likely scenario.

What I’m Thinking

The cancellation of the Nuggets’ game Sunday in Memphis will make for an even busier stretch late in the season, but it came at an opportune time for Denver.

It bought the players handling heavy minutes a little extra rest during a packed schedule leading up to the All-Star break and gave the injured players extra time to recover without missing an additional game for now. It also pushed the deadline to convert Spencer Jones to a standard contract down the road a little bit.

Jones has been active in 45 of Denver’s first 46 games, leaving him five more appearances before he runs out of games on his two-way contract. If Jones plays in Denver’s next five games, the Feb. 3 game in Detroit would be the last he could play on his current contract. Ideally, the Nuggets watch how the trade deadline plays out before deciding on Jones. Thanks to the cancellation, that outcome would only force Jones to be inactive for one game of Denver’s choosing before the Feb. 5 deadline.

The multi-day gaps in the Nuggets and Grizzlies don’t line up very cleanly. Rescheduling the game might mean other games are moved to create space.

Our solution, have the teams whose schedules were impacted by the winter storm decide whether they would make up the missed game at the beginning or end of the All-Star break.

What They’re Saying

“It’s just the stress test. That’s what they go by, and they look at his body and how it responded to yesterday,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said of the decision to play Aaron Gordon on Friday in Milwaukee. “The response was good. Let’s just be honest. This is not an exact science. These injuries, they can come back anytime. Aaron’s had different ones. … I feel for him. He’s optimistic it’s not as bad as it was, the last one, but we don’t know until we get it actually tested. Nobody made a mistake with him playing. You can only do what you can do. We have the best people in the world making decisions. They believed that the stress test showed that he was good to go, and so he was good to go.”

What I’m Following

The Nuggets finally headed back to Denver Monday evening after spending the three previous nights in Memphis.

Nikola Jokic, Christian Braun, Cam Johnson and Gordon are listed as out for Tuesday’s game against Detroit, while Jamal Murray, Peyton Watson and Jonas Valanciunas are listed as probable.

Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff will serve as one of the three coaches for the All-Star Game after Detroit clinched the best record in the Eastern Conference through Feb. 1. The Oklahoma City Thunder are going to have the Western Conference’s best record at the cutoff date, but Mark Daigneault is ineligible after coaching last season. San Antonio and Denver started Tuesday with matching 31-15 records, meaning Adelman and his staff could be heading to Los Angeles with a strong close to January.

Denver did not have a representative selected to the Rising Stars game, which features second-year players, rookies and NBA G League representatives.

The Dunk Contest will have a new champion for the first time since 2023. Mac McClung will not participate this year, though he did say he will release videos of the dunks he would’ve performed.