A fully healthy Denver Nuggets squad is playing basketball right now

539 days.

That’s how lengthy it’s been for the reason that Denver Nuggets have been final wholesome. Jamal Murray went down days after the staff traded for Aaron Gordon, ending a several-game stretch of attractive basketball with the 2, Michael Porter Jr. and Will Barton surrounding would-be MVP Nikola Jokic.

Two Jokic MVP wins, a surprising playoff sequence win adopted by dropping eight of their final 9 within the postseason, and a 331-day-long Porter damage, and the Nuggets are lastly again. Effectively, largely.

Barton is gone, traded for Kentavious Caldwell Pope within the offseason, and KCP, alongside Murray within the backcourt, and Porter, Gordon, and Jokic are all on the ground opening the preseason on Monday at Ball Enviornment. This appears like a monumental day for the Nuggets.

Lastly, the budding star guard Murray can decide up the place he left off. Now the oft-injured Porter can attempt to recapture his unimaginable capturing. And most of all, Jokic and Gordon, who’ve carried the staff for almost two years, can take a deep breath as a result of the reinforcements are right here.

When the Nuggets have been final wholesome within the playoffs, Murray, Porter, Jokic, Barton, and Jerami Grant fell to the eventual champion Lakers in tight Western Convention Finals. Whereas the Nuggets have been caught in rehab, the west has weakened round them. A whole Phoenix Suns window has opened and closed, the Jazz have blown it up, the Blazers are a really totally different staff, the aged LeBron James-led Lakers have been a catastrophe, the Warriors gained a title a couple of months in the past however needed to reduce salaries, weakening their depth, and the Clippers have been caught with most of the identical damage points the Nuggets have. And people are simply the groups Denver has not too long ago run into within the playoffs.

If Denver is to ever win the west for the primary time, the window may very well be now.

In the meantime, Altitude TV has been off of Denver’s TV for properly over 539 days, so if you happen to missed the second the entire Nuggets obtained again, listed here are some highlights.

Denver’s season beings in earnest later this month on the nineteenth in Utah.