Aaron Gordon’s 30s aren’t treating him well so far.
His legs can’t catch a break. They betray him every time he begins to regain his trust in them. Denver’s do-it-all power forward will miss extended time again after reinjuring his right hamstring last Friday. His progress be evaluated in four to six weeks, the Nuggets announced on Thursday.
“That’s a very unselfish person in Aaron, and being able to help his teammates and win games is a big part of who he is. It’s why his jersey will hang here,” coach David Adelman said. “So he’s where he should be (emotionally). Frustrated. Pissed off.”
And wondering, again, why this keeps happening to him. Gordon had already missed 24 of Denver’s first 47 games this season before the team’s announcement Thursday, including a stretch of 19 straight games from mid-November through early January. The initial injury occurred Nov. 21 in Houston.
Denver brought Gordon back on a minutes restriction earlier this month and even played him off the bench for a handful of games. He reaggravated the injury while playing the second night of a back-to-back in Milwaukee after logging 33 minutes the previous night — the most he had played in more than two months. The Nuggets were sitting most of their usual rotation in Milwaukee, where Gordon pulled up spontaneously and reached for his hamstring late in the first half. He was the exception.
Adelman defended the decision to play Gordon afterward, saying “nobody made a mistake” and that Gordon was cleared because he passed a stress test.
He and the Nuggets have been trying to navigate a growing trend of soft tissue injuries. This was his third hamstring strain in the last nine months. He injured his left hamstring in Game 6 of Denver’s second-round playoff series against the Thunder last May, after dealing with a calf strain on and off during the regular season.
When healthy, Gordon has been a force since turning 30 last September. He’s averaging 17.7 points and 6.2 rebounds per game, including a 50-point performance on opening night at Golden State. But Thursday’s game against Brooklyn was the 56th that he’s missed since the start of last season.
Because the Nuggets got stranded in Memphis during a blizzard last weekend, he wasn’t able to have an MRI done to determine the severity of the strain until mid-week. Initially, Adelman said Gordon had been optimistic that his latest injury wouldn’t cost him as much time as the November strain. But a six-week timeline puts him on track to return in mid-March. The team may want to be even more cautious than that.
“It hurts the team, but I’m more concerned about him,” said Adelman, who has known Gordon for years dating back to when they overlapped in Orlando. “Just him having to restart this whole process, find the motivation to get back. We know he’ll be back before the end of the season. And he’ll get back to being who he is. Just an unfortunate thing in a season of many unfortunate things.
“So yeah, I’m more concerned about Aaron as a person and trying to get him in the right head space to complete this short journey again that he just went through. … It’s just been one of those years. Crazy year.”
Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.