Nuggets Host Spurs, Look To Play Spoiler

Brian Shaw, Ty Lawson and the Denver Nuggets are looking to the future.

With focus switching to next season in the Mile High City, the Denver Nuggets make the journey to Texas on Wednesday to begin a home-and-home series with the San Antonio Spurs.

Tip-off at AT&T Center is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. ET.

For the record, Denver (32-39, 13-23 road) remains alive in the Western Conference playoff hunt, but with just one loss equating to elimination, it would take a basketball miracle for the Nuggets to make the postseason. With nine of the last 11 against potential playoff teams, and one of the other two against the surging New Orleans Pelicans, basketball miracles look to be in short order for the injury decimated Nuggets.

In reality, first-year head coach Brian Shaw and his staff has long known the team’s fate this season. A 1-11 record between February 7 – when the team was 24-23 – and March 3 effectively ended any hope of playing into the second half of April.

The Nuggets have valiantly gone 7-5 since to stay in the race mathematically, but the focus in Denver has firmly shifted to the 2014-15 campaign. Talking with the Denver Post on Monday, Shaw described the remaining schedule as “basically a training camp.”

He went on to express his confidence in the scheme of play the Nuggets have worked with this season as well as extolling the virtues of building the team around point guard Ty Lawson.

Denver has been decimated by injuries this season, and are currently without Danilo Gallinari (knee), J.J. Hickson (knee), JaVale McGee (leg), Nate Robinson (knee) for the rest of the season, while Jan Vesely could also be done for the year following a rib injury suffered over the weekend. In that respects, Shaw and his coaching staff have done an exceptional task and should think positively about the future.

But for now, there’s still work to be done. The “training camp” end to this season gives the Nuggets the opportunity to play spoiler in the Western Conference. And this begins with a pair of games against the Southwest Division-leading Spurs.

After Wednesday night’s game in the Alamo City, the two sides will head back to Denver for a Friday night encore (9:00 p.m. ET).

San Antonio (54-16, 27-8 home) rides into Wednesday’s contest on the back of 14 consecutive victories. The Nuggets would love to put an end to this run of success.

The Spurs defeated the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday, sending the Sixers to a 25th straight loss. The victory proved enough to secure Gregg Popovich’s side a postseason berth.

With the Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Clippers hot on their heels, the Spurs will look to maintain their recent dominance. They may need to do so without Tony Parker, who is listed as day-to-day with an Achilles injury.

The Nuggets and Spurs met way back in the first week of the season. San Antonio emerged from the Pepsi Center with a 102-94 victory that night, but success didn’t come easy.

The Nuggets held a nine-point halftime lead in the game and went into the fourth quarter with a 78-72 advantage. The Spurs’ defense caught up though and held the Nuggets to just 16 points in the fourth quarter, and went on to victory.

All 11 Spurs scored that night with Tony Parker’s 24 points leading the way. Tim Duncan tallied 17 points, eight boards, eight assists, and four blocks in the game. Lawson led the Nuggets with 20 points and eight assists while Kenneth Faried had 15 points and eight rebounds.

The victory marked the seventh game in a row in which the Spurs and Nuggets had traded wins.

Denver Nuggets vs. San Antonio Spurs odds for 03/26/2014

The Nuggets will open the game as an understandable underdog, thanks to that laundry list of injuries.

While the two sides have been fairly even in their head-to-head battles in recent years, home court advantage has proven huge. The Nuggets have won just one of their last five trips to AT&T Center.

The spread opened at 13.5.

After covering the spread in five straight games, Denver (31-39-1 ATS) is just 1-2-0 ATS over the last three. The Nuggets also failed to cover when these two sides met in November.

San Antonio (38-32-0 ATS) meanwhile has covered the spread in eight straight, 10 of the last 11, and 14 of the last 18, which should make the side a huge favorite to cover against the Nuggets. However, Denver is 8-2-0 ATS in its last 10 visits to AT&T Center. With the double-digit spread, the away side could be set to cover.

The total opened at 217.

San Antonio (40-30-0) has favored the over this season, while Denver (35-36-0) has almost split the over/under evenly.

Four of Denver’s last six and five of San Antonio’s last seven have seen the under pay out. The total went under when these two sides met earlier in the year.

The total has gone under in 14 of the last 17 matchups between the teams in the Alamo City.

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