Nuggets guard Chauncey Billups participated in practice Wednesday, but not at full speed, and he remains a question mark for Friday’s game against Chicago.
Billups said his status was “still up in the air.” Coach George Karl agreed but sounded a bit more optimistic.
“I’m thinking he’ll play,” Karl said. “He ran a little bit today, but he didn’t really go after it because he still had another day of rest.”
Billups missed Monday’s game against Golden State because of a wrist injury, which he suffered in a bad fall against New Jersey on Nov. 20. Going up for a layup, he was fouled and fell face-first onto the court. In addition to the wrist injury, he suffered a fractured nose and a nose laceration that required stitches to close.
Ty Lawson started against Golden State, a game that Carmelo Anthony thought Billups might have been ready to play.
“Yeah, I think the wrist was bothering him a little bit more,” Anthony said. “Going out there, he told me he was going to play. So, obviously, it was bothering him more than that. But I think this week couldn’t have come at a better time for him, for us, just to get everybody’s bodies right, get a little bit of rest.”
Next day Bird.
Often, the biggest clue that a previously injured body part is healed is how it feels the day after it’s tested.
Nuggets forward Chris Andersen played his first game of the season Monday following a lengthy knee rehab.
A couple of days later, the Birdman said all was still fine with the knee.
“No swelling, nothing,” Andersen said.
Now, Andersen is homing in on conditioning, working diligently to make up for lost time.
“I wasn’t able to do all of the conditioning stuff that I usually do in the summer like run Red Rocks, go hiking in the mountains at Vail, go mountain biking at Breckenridge. All of those things that I do I wasn’t able to do this summer because of my knee,” Andersen said.
“So, it’s just a matter of not overloading my leg and pushing it to an extreme where I might make it flare back up and be out of luck and have to sit out again because I’m pushing the workload.”
Praising Ty.
Lawson filled in admirably for Billups on Monday with 14 points, five assists and four rebounds in 33 minutes in the win over Golden State.
His continual upwardly mobile play has earned high marks from Karl.
“We’re blessed to have a guy who could be starting for some teams in this league,” Karl said. “It’s a good win for us.”
Chris Dempsey, The Denver Post
