For the first time in more than a month and a half, the Nuggets saw a familiar face on the practice court Monday.
Randy Foye.
The veteran shooting guard participated in his first practice since being sidelined by a small right quadriceps tear in late November.
“It felt pretty good,” Foye said.
Foye said he was so excited to get back on the court, he could barely sleep Sunday night because of the anticipation. The Nuggets took it easy on him; Foye went through a little more than 30 minutes of the practice. If he doesn’t have a setback, he will be able to gradually increase his workload until he is able to return to action.
He has missed 23 consecutive games.
“This is my first day participating in any kind of contact where Kenneth (Faried) is running into me, JJ (Hickson) and them guys are banging me,” Foye said. “This is the first day that I jumped into the fire. It felt good. It’s something that I’ve been away from for a while, and I was just excited.”
Coach Brian Shaw shared the glee in seeing Foye back.
“He was good,” Shaw said. “Obviously the difference between all of the conditioning stuff that you do and when you actually get out on the floor and bodies are leaning on you, hitting you, is a little different. He’ll admit he was a little rusty, but that was probably the only signs that he showed of anything. He wasn’t favoring his leg or anything.”
Foye acknowledged his conditioning was an issue.
“The first 10 minutes it felt like I couldn’t breathe, but after that it was pretty good,” Foye said. “Still a lot of rust, but pretty good.”
Without him in the lineup, the Nuggets have missed one of their top scorers off the bench, one of their top 3-point shooters and arguably their best leader. Foye was averaging 8.4 points and shooting 34.7 percent from the 3-point line when he was injured.
Shaw said the Nuggets (17-20) missed “his shooting ability and his ability to be able to space the floor. His ball handling, being able to take Nate (Robinson) off the ball if he’s in there with Nate, or even Ty (Lawson) off the ball. Just his overall experience.”
And yet, neither Foye nor Shaw is ready to proclaim Foye ready right now or even in the next few days. Shaw is generally hoping for a return of all of Denver’s long-term injured players — Foye, JaVale McGee (strained lower leg) and Danilo Gallinari (knee) — by the end of January.
“Definitely can see light at the end of the tunnel, but still not exactly sure when they will let me go in,” Foye said. “If it was up to me, I would get out there.”
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or
