{"id":590839,"date":"2026-02-08T16:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T16:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/590839\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T16:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T16:47:13","slug":"northwest-notes-nuggets-henderson-sharpe-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/590839\/","title":{"rendered":"Northwest Notes: Nuggets, Henderson, Sharpe, Jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Injuries have been an issue all season long for the Nuggets, who are currently missing forward Aaron Gordon<\/a> and swingman Peyton Watson<\/a>, but the health-related news on Saturday was mostly positive. As Bennett Durando of The Denver Post<\/a> details (subscription required), wing Cameron Johnson<\/a> \u2013 who had been out since December 23 due to a bone bruise in his knee \u2013 returned and was effective vs. Chicago, finishing with 14 points on 6-of-9 shooting.<\/p>\n

Star center Nikola Jokic<\/a>, meanwhile, was listed as questionable to play on Saturday due to a mildly sprained ankle, but he suited up and dominated, racking up 22 points, 17 assists, and 14 rebounds \u2014 Denver outscored the Bulls by 36 points during Jokic\u2019s 33 minutes on the floor en route to a 136-120 victory.<\/p>\n

First-time All-Star Jamal Murray<\/a>, who has been the Nuggets\u2019 healthiest starter this season, exited to the locker room with about four minutes left in the game due to a hip issue, but he returned to the bench before the final whistle and didn\u2019t seem concerned after the game about the apparent injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe seemed confident that he was OK,\u201d head coach David Adelman said, per Durando (Twitter link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Finally, while two-way player Spencer Jones<\/a> isn\u2019t injured, he was inactive on Saturday for a second time in the past three games after having reached his 50-game limit. As Durando writes within an interesting profile of Jones for The Denver Post<\/a> (subscription required), the team is preparing to move the second-year forward into one the two open spots on its 15-man roster, though it\u2019s unclear when exactly that will happen.<\/p>\n

Denver plays twice before the All-Star break \u2013 Monday vs. Cleveland and Wednesday vs. Memphis \u2013 and will need to promote Jones to a standard contract if it wants him available for those games.<\/p>\n

We have more from around the Northwest:<\/p>\n

Making his season debut on Friday after recovering from a torn hamstring, Trail Blazers guard Scoot Henderson<\/a> had 11 points and nine assists in 21 minutes as the team snapped a six-game losing streak with a victory over Memphis. Teammate Jerami Grant<\/a> said Henderson played \u201camazing\u201d following his lengthy layoff, per Joe Freeman of The Oregonian<\/a>. Interim head coach Tiago Splitter wasn\u2019t quite as effusive with his praise, but suggested he was very encouraged by the third-year guard\u2019s performance. \u201cHe was impressive on defense,\u201d Splitter said, according to Jason Quick of The Athletic<\/a>. \u201cHe brought energy, he pushed the pace, made some shots. Still was room for improvement, but just good to see him competing.\u201d
\nAs the Trail Blazers got one guard back, they lost another to an injury. Shaedon Sharpe<\/a> exited Friday\u2019s win due to calf soreness and didn\u2019t play on Saturday. Still, as Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report points out (via Twitter<\/a>), there are a couple encouraging signs on Sharpe \u2014 he\u2019s listed as having \u201csoreness\u201d rather than a strain, and the injury is to his left calf, not the right one, which he strained earlier in the season. That right calf injury cost him four games in November.
\nWalker Kessler<\/a> is out for the rest of the season and will enter restricted free agency this summer, so there\u2019s no guarantee that he, Lauri Markkanen<\/a>, and Jaren Jackson Jr.<\/a> will ever share the court together for the Jazz. But that\u2019s certainly the plan in Utah \u2014 head coach Will Hardy tells Andy Larsen of The Salt Lake Tribune<\/a> that he\u2019s excited about the size, rebounding, and rim-protecting ability of his new frontcourt trio and that he\u2019s confident they\u2019ll fit together offensively too. \u201cWe\u2019ve played with Lauri as the quote-unquote \u2018three\u2019 before during my time here, and Jaren is a really talented player,\u201d Hardy said. \u201cI think it\u2019s going to be good to get him in the building and around the team so that we can become and I can become more familiar with what his capabilities really are. You have all these preconceived notions of players when you coach against them, but they\u2019re being asked to play within some type of a system wherever they are, and so it\u2019ll be fun to explore those things with him and make him a part of the conversation in terms of what he thinks he can offer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Injuries have been an issue all season long for the Nuggets, who are currently missing forward Aaron Gordon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3785],"tags":[7,2726,762,496,423,976,6,253,4425,4426,26517,422,427,3972,1405],"class_list":{"0":"post-590839","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cameron-johnson","10":"tag-jamal-murray","11":"tag-jaren-jackson-jr","12":"tag-jazz","13":"tag-lauri-markkanen","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nikola-jokic","16":"tag-scoot-henderson","17":"tag-shaedon-sharpe","18":"tag-spencer-jones","19":"tag-utah","20":"tag-utah-jazz","21":"tag-utahjazz","22":"tag-walker-kessler"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116036032584913305","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590839","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=590839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}