Aaron Gordon has missed 39 of Denver’s 62 games this season with a right hamstring injury.
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These aren’t the Denver Nuggets.
Not the real Denver Nuggets, anyway.
For all of Nikola Jokić’s greatness and Jamal Murray’s splendor, history tells us that this group can’t typically reach true title-contending status unless Aaron Gordon — a fully healthy Aaron Gordon, more importantly — is on the floor. To that end, the Nuggets appear to be on the verge of a crucial upgrade.
Again.
Per a league source close to Gordon, the veteran forward — who re-aggravated his right hamstring injury on Jan. 23 — is targeting a return in Friday’s home game against the New York Knicks. It remains to be seen if he’ll get the necessary clearance from the Nuggets, who are being understandably cautious here in light of the setback he suffered six weeks ago
Gordon missed 19 games earlier this season with the hamstring injury, then pulled up lame on a routine rebound against the Milwaukee Bucks in his 10th game back and has been sidelined ever since. As such, there is clearly a high level of concern and care being exercised about his return. With the postseason still more than a month away, and the Nuggets (38-24; fifth in the Western Conference) having lost 11 of their last 20 games while also enduring the extended absence of another pivotal player in Peyton Watson (hamstring), the stakes of this choice are incredibly high.
Gordon is merely one of the many Nuggets’ core players to miss significant time this season, with three-time MVP Jokić topping that long list. It should come as no surprise, then, that Gordon has been eager to return for quite some time. The 30-year-old has already missed 39 of Denver’s 62 games after first straining the hamstring on Nov. 21.
During that time, meanwhile, Gordon and the Nuggets were reminded of two harsh realities that have been in direct conflict with one another for months:
- Hamstrings can be brutal to recover from in the middle of an 82-game regular season.
- Gordon might be the most important role player in the NBA.
While that “role player” label is often considered a pejorative to a talent of Gordon’s ilk, he has long embraced this crucial role of augmenting the Jokić-Murray dynamic duo and taking the Nuggets to the next level. That was the genius of the trade with the Orlando Magic made by then-Nuggets president of basketball operations Tim Connelly at the deadline in 2021. Connelly was looking for a replacement for the departed Jerami Grant (who left in free agency the summer before) and targeted Gordon as a perfect fit.
After six-plus seasons in Orlando, where Gordon took part in just one playoff series and had mixed results as a primary option in those later years, he asked for a trade before landing in the Mile High City. The Magic had talks with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Portland Trail Blazers and Boston Celtics at that time, with the Celtics known to be Gordon’s top preference. But the Nuggets, who were confident he’d accept this crucial role, won the Gordon sweepstakes by sending Gary Harris, R.J. Hampton and a protected 2025 first-round pick to the Magic (that pick became shooting guard Jase Richardson, who was drafted 25th out of Michigan State and is playing limited minutes in his rookie season).
As I wrote the day before that deal went down, Gordon’s ability to guard so many positions on the floor — and to guard elite wing scorers, specifically — was the driving force behind Denver’s interest. The Nuggets pored over that data at the time, taking notice of how well he’d defended stars like Luka Dončić, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Durant. Gordon topped the list of available players who had a chance to slow those kinds of future Hall of Famers. What’s more, Denver was just 13th in defensive rating at the time and in desperate need of a solution on that end.
Sound familiar? The Nuggets now find themselves in a similar spot, with a defense that has fallen to 21st in the league and the harsh reality that champions don’t often have that defensive profile. Even if, as is the case, they currently boast the league’s top offense.
When Denver won the franchise’s only title in 2023, the Nuggets were fifth in offensive rating and 15th in defensive rating. Yet since the 1996-97 campaign, only one other team has won a title with a defensive rating outside of the top 11 (the Los Angeles Lakers, in the 2000-01 season, were 22nd). Of the 26 other champions in that stretch, 18 had top-five defensive ratings, and eight were between No. 6 and No. 11. This is why it’s imperative that the Nuggets have their most versatile defender available when the games matter most.
Just like last season.
The Nuggets are no strangers to this revelation about Gordon and his incredible impact, as they lost Game 7 of last year’s second-round series against the eventual champion Oklahoma City Thunder, in part, because Gordon was hobbled by a hamstring injury (that was his left one). It was a minor miracle that he played at all in that game, as he was diagnosed with a Grade 2 strain after suffering the injury in Game 6. But Gordon was hardly his aggressive, agile self in the finale (a 125-93 Thunder win), finishing with eight points (on four shots), 11 rebounds, no assists, four turnovers and a minus-9 mark in 25 minutes as a starter.
Fast forward to the present day, and the numbers have continued to confirm the eye test when it comes to Gordon’s value. Denver’s defensive rating with him this season (108.9 points allowed per 100 possessions) would qualify as the league’s second-best. That mark is also 8.2 points better than when Gordon is off the floor (117.1 allowed). Ditto for Denver’s overall effectiveness (14.0 net rating with him, and just 1.9 without).
Gordon was playing some of his best offensive basketball before getting hurt (twice) too. He opened the season with the first 50-point game of his career, burying the Golden State Warriors on the road in the process. Gordon was on pace to set a new career high in scoring (currently 17.7 points per game, with his previous high 17.6 in the 2017-18 season with the Magic). He was shooting 3s better than ever, too, with a 40 percent clip from beyond the arc (on 4.6 attempts per) that would qualify as the second-best of his career if he maintained that pace (he’s at 33.4 percent for his career).
All of which is to say that Gordon’s presence might make or break the Nuggets’ entire season.
If he’s able to stay healthy until the end, and if Watson and Cam Johnson (ankle) return soon as well, then it’s easy to see them getting back to their once-dominant ways en route to real title contention. But if not, then it won’t be a mystery why they fell short.
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Sam Amick is a senior NBA writer for The Athletic. He has covered the Association for the better part of two decades while at USA Today, Sports Illustrated, AOL FanHouse and the Sacramento Bee. Follow Sam on Twiiter @sam_amick
