134-127 double-overtime victory<\/a> on Wednesday night.<\/p>\nForward Spencer Jones didn’t play after the first quarter, when his head-to-head collision opened the cut over Towns’ eye. Peyton Watson, the other forward, went out in the fourth quarter holding his right hamstring.<\/p>\n
Jamal Murray, who led Denver with 39 points, said at some point he realized Jones hadn’t returned but didn’t even notice that Watson had left.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the game, I was kind of lost. I was like, where\u2019s everybody at?\u201d Murray said. \u201cBut like I said, it\u2019s just next man up and we gave a great game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach David Adelman said Jones was being evaluated for a concussion and Watson would undergo an MRI. They have had to play larger roles with normal starting forwards Aaron Gordon and Cam Johnson sidelined.<\/p>\n
It could have been worse for the Nuggets. Nikola Jokic, who just returned last week after missing 16 games with a left knee injury, fell to the court in the first quarter after appearing to step on a Knicks player\u2019s foot while on defense \u2014 a play that somewhat resembled the one he was injured on in Miami on Dec. 29. The Nuggets called time and Jokic limped off the injury during the break, perhaps looking more frustrated than hurt, before staying in the game.<\/p>\n
He said the pain this time was his ankle, not his knee, and was asked if it bothered him while playing 45 minutes, blowing well past his minutes restriction, and finishing with 30 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little bit, but who cares?\u201d Jokic said.<\/p>\n
It was later in the first quarter when Towns tried to drive to the basket, banged heads with Jones and fell backward onto the court. He didn’t initially realize how bad the injury was until he noticed the way the Nuggets’ Tim Hardaway Jr. was looking at him.<\/p>\n
Towns was treated before shooting the two free throws, which he needed to do to be able to return to the game. He made them, then left for stitches and a change of his bloody jersey.<\/p>\n
He finished with 24 points and 12 rebounds as the Knicks extended their winning streak to eight games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to get the job done. It was a great team out there and it was a game that we all knew we wanted to keep the momentum going and there\u2019s no better team to test our mettle against than the Denver Nuggets,\u201d Towns said. \u201cThey know how to win a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\nCopyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Karl-Anthony Towns had a bandage over his right eye covering the stitches he needed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,301,187,3943,6,302,68184,68185,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-583560","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-denver-nuggets","11":"tag-denvernuggets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nuggets","14":"tag-pro_national_sports","15":"tag-pronational_sports","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116016561867905688","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583560","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=583560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}