Spurs at Nuggets
The San Antonio Spurs will try to regroup when they travel to the Denver Nuggets for a Sunday night game. The Spurs have lost two of their last three and both losses came against sub-.500 teams, the Utah Jazz and Los Angeles Lakers. San Antonio had a chance to move up the Western Conference standings during a four-game stretch against the three worst teams in the West and one of the worst in the East, but only went 2-2.
Denver is also in the bottom eight in the West but it avoided another significant injury Saturday night when power forward Kenneth Faried went to the locker room with an ankle sprain but later returned. Faried was in his second game back after missing two games with a lower back strain. The Spurs have been without starting small forward Kawhi Leonard the last two games with a bruised right hand and he remains questionable to play against the Nuggets.
TV: 8 p.m. ET, FSN Southwest (San Antonio), Altitude (Denver)
ABOUT THE SPURS (16-7): Tony Parker returned against the Lakers after missing three games with a hamstring injury but played just 18 minutes and scored five points. He’ll need to be better than that against the Nuggets, who have one of the most productive point guards in the NBA right now in Ty Lawson. Tim Duncan played a season-high 40 minutes in the overtime loss to the Lakers and it will be interesting to see how the 38-year-old bounces back two days later at altitude.
ABOUT THE NUGGETS (10-13): Timofey Mozgov should be plenty fresh against the Spurs as he went scoreless in 14 minutes against the Rockets. He had 14 points and 11 rebounds against San Antonio in the first of back-to-back games against the Spurs last March but didn’t match that effort two days later as the Nuggets lost by 31 points and he scored seven. Denver will likely be without backup center JaVale McGee for a fourth straight game because of a leg injury, leaving even more scoring responsibilities on Mozgov's shoulders.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Spurs backup PG Patty Mills remains out with a shoulder injury.
2. Nuggets backup PF Danilo Gallinari remains out while he rests his surgically repaired knee.
3. Lawson has five double-doubles this month after collecting seven in November.