{"id":543103,"date":"2026-01-17T17:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T17:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/543103\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T17:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T17:22:14","slug":"preview-denver-nuggets-face-rebuilding-washington-wizards-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/543103\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview: Denver Nuggets face rebuilding Washington Wizards team"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Wizards kicked off the trade season this year by sending C.J. McCollum & Corey Kispert to the Atlanta Hawks in exchange for Trae Young. Young is now out with injury which means the Denver Nuggets will get a very underwhelming opponent tonight at Ball Arena. The Nuggets meanwhile continue to battle injuries, Christian Braun recently tested his ankle in live game action and clearly wasn\u2019t ready, while Denver is still missing two other starters, including Nikola Jokic, and key backup Jonas Valanciunas. This won\u2019t be as easy as it looks.<\/p>\n

The Basics<\/p>\n

Who: Denver Nuggets (28-13) vs Washington Wizards (10-30)<\/p>\n

When: 7PM MST<\/p>\n

Where: The Can. Denver, CO.<\/p>\n

How to watch\/listen: Altitude TV and Altitude Radio 92.5FM<\/p>\n

Rival Blog: Bullets Forever<\/a><\/p>\n

The Matchup<\/p>\n

PositionNuggetsWizardsAdvantagePGJamal MurrayBub CarringtonNuggetsSGJalen PickettTre JohnsonEvenSFPeyton WatsonJustin ChampagnieNuggetsPFAaron GordonKyshawn GeorgeNuggetsCSpencer JonesAlex SarrWizardsBenchBruce Brown, Zeke Nnaji, Tim Hardaway Jr., Julian StrawtherJamir Watkins, Will Riley, Marvin Bagley III, Malaki Branham, AJ JohnsonEven<\/p>\n

Injury report*: Jamal Murray \u2013 probable (ankle\/illness), Aaron Gordon \u2013 probable (hamstring), Bruce Brown \u2013 probable (knee), Nikola Jokic \u2013 out (knee), Christian Braun \u2013 out (ankle), Cameron Johnson \u2013 out (knee), Jonas Valanciunas \u2013 out (calf), Tamar Bates \u2013 out (foot), Curtis Jones \u2013 out (G-League); Khris Middleton \u2013 questionable (knee), Tristan Vukcevic \u2013 questionable (knee), Bilal Coulibaby \u2013 out (back), Cam Whitmore \u2013 out (shoulder), Trae Young \u2013 out (quad). *The Washington Wizards official injury report was not available at time of writing.<\/p>\n

The Three Things<\/p>\n

The thing to watch for: Dealing with Alex Sarr<\/p>\n

\"\"Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Whether or not Alex Sarr is living up to his #2 overall pick status from a year ago is probably a matter of debate but there\u2019s little debating his length. Sarr is a legitimate seven footer who\u2019s averaging 17 points and 7.5 rebounds. He operates pretty much exclusively in the paint but does make full use of the space. He can also on occasion step out to the three point line so the Nuggets can\u2019t just ignore his jumper either. He creates a challenging proposition for the undersized Nuggets with his length and skill. I imagine Spencer Jones will get the first crack at it, but don\u2019t be surprised to see some significant Zeke Nnaji minutes tonight as he\u2019s the best suited physically to match up with Sarr.<\/p>\n

The thing to remember: Denver has been sleeping on the Wizards<\/p>\n

Not many teams swept the Nuggets in the regular season last year but one them was the Washington Wizards. That\u2019s right, Denver constituted approximately 11% of Washington\u2019s wins last season. Prior to last season the Nuggets swept the Wizards three seasons in a row\u2026maybe there is something to this Sarr thing\u2026I digress. Every team is guilty of overlooking bad teams and dropping a game and last season that team for the Nuggets was the Wizards. Hopefully they all remember that and look to put this game away early.<\/p>\n

The thing to bet: Zeke Nnaji over 4.5 rebounds (-114)<\/p>\n

Like I said, I think Zeke plays a lot tonight. 5 boards is also pretty low for a guy who plays backup center right now and is getting roughly 20 minutes a night off the bench. If this bet isn\u2019t for you then you can always bet the over on Peyton Watson points at 19.5 (-118) which sort of feels like free money at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Wizards kicked off the trade season this year by sending C.J. McCollum & Corey Kispert to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3781],"tags":[877,979,7,561,301,187,3943,762,2039,6,253,302,66,494,468],"class_list":{"0":"post-543103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-aaron-gordon","9":"tag-alex-sarr","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-christian-braun","12":"tag-denver","13":"tag-denver-nuggets","14":"tag-denvernuggets","15":"tag-jamal-murray","16":"tag-khris-middleton","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-nikola-jokic","19":"tag-nuggets","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-trae-young","22":"tag-washington-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115911600281865879","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}