Nuggets center Joffrey Lauverge guards Minnesota Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns in a game earlier this season. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
The waiting is starting to get old to Nuggets center Joffrey Lauvergne.
He’ll miss his fifth straight game on Wednesday, when the Nuggets face the Milwaukee Bucks, because of a strained lower back.
“I’m not really used to being injured,” Lauvergne said. “Last season I didn’t miss not one practice. I never got sick or hurt or whatever. I don’t want to complain, it’s not a big injury. I don’t have to get surgery or whatever. I just want to play. It’s boring not to play.”
Lauvergne was in the midst of a meteoric rise when his back started acting up. He said he first started feeling tightness late in the preseason. Then, he just dealt with the pain. But by the Nuggets’ third game, at Oklahoma City, the pain became too much for him to bear.
“It’s strange, I’ve had back problems before where you do one movement and it locks,” Lauvergne said. “This is not that. My back, the more I go it gets tighter and tighter and tighter, and then I cannot move anymore.”
An MRI showed inflammation in his lower back. And while rest and other treatments haven’t alleviated the pain, he said he’s likely going to get an injection to help in the next couple of days. That may help him return to action by Saturday, when the Nuggets play at Phoenix.
“So I say I’m going to do this, because it’s starting to be long now,” Lauvergne said. “It’s one week. So I don’t want to lose my time for no reason, you know? So I said I’m going to do it tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. And after this I’m supposed to feel good.”
Meanwhile, center Jusuf Nurkic is getting ever closer to a return. He’s been doing on-court work, and on Tuesday the second-year player went through a non-contact portion of practice, under heavy supervision. He’s under minute restrictions, so coaches decide what non-contact portion of practice he goes though.
Should he continue to improve, the workload will increase.
There remains no timetable for Nurkic’s return but a getting back to some practicing is a good sign that he’s not far off. When Nurkic returns to full contact, it would be reasonable to think he’d be within days of a season debut. But for now, he and the Nuggets training staff are taking it one step at a time.
Another frontcourt player, Forward Kenneth Faried is getting increasingly battered and bruised. Ice packs covered a good portion of his body after Monday’s game against Portland. And while Faried smiled and said, “I’m alive, so I’m good” when asked how he was doing, he bears keeping an eye on.
It wasn’t long ago that Faried was on the injury report for back soreness. Now, he’s on the injury report for a gluteal contusion, but is listed as probable for the game against the Bucks.
Point guard Jameer Nelson (SI joint sprain) is questionable for the game. If he is not able to play for a second straight game, then veteran Randy Foye will assume backup point guard duties.
Follow Chris Dempsey on Twitter @dempseypost or email him at cdempsey@denverpost.com
