NEW YORK — A small handful of calls against the Nuggets this season have been so instantly appalling to David Adelman that they’ve evoked a visceral physical reaction from him on the sideline. The foul called against Christian Braun with 90 seconds left in overtime Wednesday night elicited one of those from him, with the entire Nuggets’ bench behind him.
Braun reeled in a defensive rebound. Knicks forward OG Anunoby tripped over his left foot while beginning to run back on defense. Braun was turning his back to Anunoby as it happened. But an offensive foul was quickly whistled. Adelman was in disbelief that he even needed to burn his last challenge to overturn the call. After the game, he still had a bone to pick — but with the NBA’s consequences for using a challenge, not with the specific call itself.
Unprompted, Adelman ended his postgame news conference by calling for a rule change, suggesting that coaches who successfully challenge a call near the end of a game should get to keep either the challenge or the timeout used to issue the challenge. In Denver’s case at Madison Square Garden, Adelman lost both his final challenge and his final timeout of overtime to flip a call he thought was obvious in the first place.
“They have to change the rule with the challenges. … And I’m not saying this is the refs’ fault. It’s not the coaches’ fault. If I challenge a play and win the challenge in overtime and lose my challenge and lose my last timeout and lose control of the possession game … I think they have to look at that, and look deep at it,” the first-year Nuggets coach said. “Because if I’m winning the challenge with under a minute to go in a game, there should be some kind of positive coming back my way. I should keep a timeout and/or a challenge. To lose both when you’re told that you’re right is really frustrating. And it doesn’t allow you to control the game late because I can’t stop the game.”
The Nuggets ended up stretching the game into a second overtime before they lost, so Adelman’s lost timeout didn’t cost them the game. But it might have contributed to an awkward final possession of the overtime period, when Jamal Murray was forced to launch a deep 3-pointer as time ran out. (Ironically, a fortuitous loose-ball foul against New York as the buzzer went off allowed Braun to tie the game with free throws at 0.3 seconds left.)
“It’s been a concern for the coaches, I know,” Adelman said. “And look, I make a million mistakes. The refs make mistakes. Whatever it is. But they have to clean that up. … It would have been nice to call a timeout and organize something after they told you you were right.”
Adelman was then asked if he ever intentionally chooses not to use a challenge for that exact reason — to conserve a final timeout in case it’s needed to advance the ball later.
“It was just such a huge play,” Adelman said. “I’m giving them possession back with a minute left. What you’re looking at if you do the math and you go, three 24-second possessions: I’m giving them two possessions, control of the game. So it’s like, you can’t do that. You have to try to control the clock as best you can with situations, with a team that has Jalen Brunson. I don’t want to give him a multitude of opportunities. So that was frustrating. It’s something I think we will probably revisit this summer as a league. I just think it kind of takes away from the beauty of what that game was, where you’re basically told, ‘Good job. You’re right. You have no control left in this game.’”
Coaches get up to two challenges per game, with the second only becoming available if the fist is used successfully. In the loss at Madison Square Garden, Adelman used his first challenge only three minutes in.
“We had a chance,” Adelman said afterward, acknowledging that his rule complaint wasn’t what cost Denver the game. “Give them credit. They just flat-out beat us in the second overtime.”
Peyton Watson injury
Peyton Watson underwent an MRI that revealed he suffered a right hamstring strain in the loss to New York, a league source told The Denver Post, confirming a report by The Athletic.
No specific timeline has been announced by the Nuggets regarding the amount of time they expect Watson to be out, but they were already bracing for him to miss extended time immediately after the game on Wednesday night. Adelman said he’ll need to evaluate the roster for another new starting lineup and rotation with the small forward out. “Get ourselves to the break,” he said, “and take a long, long rest.”
Watson was averaging 22.2 points and 5.5 rebounds in his last 18 games before he suffered the injury. Shooting 50% from the field and 42.5% from three, he’s been one of Denver’s most valuable players this season, especially as the team has navigated other injuries. He’ll join Nikola Jokic, Aaron Gordon, Braun, Cam Johnson and Jonas Valanciunas in missing extended time.
How numb have the Nuggets gotten to those injuries? Jamal Murray said in the locker room on Wednesday that he hadn’t even noticed that Watson didn’t return to the game after limping off in the second half.
“Just seen so much of this this year,” Adelman said. “I just feel bad for the guys in the locker room. It’s deflating when you keep seeing guys go down around you when you’re trying to build toward something.”
Nikola Jokic on playing past his minute restriction
Denver’s three-time MVP winner played well past his minutes restriction on back-to-back nights this week in Detroit and New York, only for the Nuggets to lose both games. But Jokic was not remotely concerned about the workload after he played both overtimes Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. He described it as a “normal thing to do” under the circumstances. He was already past the restriction (at 34) by the end of regulation, the Nuggets were trying to avoid their first three-game losing streak of the season, and they had two days off waiting for them afterward.
“I feel good,” Jokic said. “I don’t feel any tiredness. I think we have like muscle memory. My body. … My people, we’re used to it, to play.”
On top of the left knee injury that’s been the cause behind his restriction, Jokic limped off the court with an injury scare to his left ankle during the first quarter. He quickly asked to stay in the game after Adelman called a timeout. Jokic said it affected him throughout the night, “a little bit. But you know, who cares?”
Adelman said Denver’s medical staff cleared Jokic to keep going in overtime.
The Nuggets almost avoided it altogether on Jokic’s last-second shot in regulation, but the deep 3-pointer rimmed out at the buzzer. “It had a good path,” he said. “But like probably every other shot, I missed.” After an uncharacteristic 1-for-13 night outside the arc, he described his touch as “more and more off” as the game went on.
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