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Utah Jazz at Denver Nuggets

Sun Oct 45:00 PM MTNBA TVBoulder, CO
By JR·2 min read
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Sunday 10/045:00 PM

TLDR: The Nuggets open their preseason on the Colorado Buffaloes' home floor, their first game in Boulder in more than a decade. The opponent is a Utah team built around kids, which makes this the first look at 2 very different rebuilds of the same roster idea.

SUN OCT 4, 5:00 PMNBA TV
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Nuggets
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Denver opens its 5-game preseason in Boulder against a Utah team led by No. 2 pick Darryn Peterson and a young backcourt. The Nuggets return the same starting five with DeMar DeRozan added, while the Jazz have to answer a frontcourt question after Walker Kessler's departure, with Jaren Jackson Jr. carrying a knee designation. The result means little. The minutes distribution and how the new pieces fit are what this exhibition is really about.

Utah Jazz
  • Peterson, George and Bailey give them young creators
  • Markkanen and Jackson anchor a scoring frontcourt
  • Kessler gone to LA, thin at center
  • Jackson carries a knee designation into camp
Denver Nuggets
  • Same starting unit back around Jokic
  • DeRozan adds a proven scorer to the rotation
  • Bunch of new faces still learning the system
  • Backcourt depth behind starters still unsettled

Tipoff is 5:00 PM MT on Sunday, October 4, at the CU Events Center. Denver has been holding camp in CU's on-campus facilities all week, so this is close to a home game in a college gym. It's also the first of 5 exhibitions for the Nuggets, so nobody should read anything off the final score. What's worth watching is who plays together and for how long.

Jokic summed up camp himself: "The starting unit is the same, but there's a bunch of new guys," adding, "I think they're going to be good." The biggest new name is DeMar DeRozan, who has spent his first week getting used to the altitude. Sunday is the first time he shares a floor with Jokic when the other team is real. There's no board posted on this one yet, which is about right for a preseason opener.

Utah shows up in a different place altogether. The Jazz took Darryn Peterson No. 2 overall in June, and he'll be 19 for his first NBA camp. He joins a young group of creators that already includes Keyonte George and Ace Bailey, with Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. up front. This is the start of a home-and-home, since the Nuggets visit Utah later in the preseason. Utah then plays San Antonio and Phoenix before the exhibition schedule wraps on October 16.

For Utah, the frontcourt is the real question. Walker Kessler is in Los Angeles now. ESPN's Tim MacMahon says that makes Jackson an even more essential piece this season, and Jackson carries a knee designation on the injury report. With no Kessler, a preseason opener in October is not a game the Jazz need to push him through. How much Jackson plays will tell you more about Utah's plan than the box score.

Denver's report is quiet. Trevon Brazile still carries a day-to-day tag from Summer League with no reason given, which is more paperwork than news. KJ Simpson is the crowd story: the former Buff was a two-time All-Pac-12 player in this building, and he gets a homecoming in a Nuggets jersey. He's also part of a backcourt-depth picture Denver has not settled yet.

This game counts for nothing in the standings. The regular season opens October 22 in Oklahoma City, and the Nuggets have 4 more tune-ups after this one. Still, Sunday is the first look at 2 things that will shape Denver's season: how DeRozan fits next to an unchanged starting group, and whether Peterson looks like the guy the Jazz are building around.