18 Denver Nuggets Games To Circle On Their 2022-23 Season Schedule

With the release of the 2022-23 NBA schedule last week, the dissection of every team’s calendar by home and road games, rest days, miles traveled, overall schedule strength and more quickly got underway as analysts and writers around the league started digging into the factors that might help predict what kind of season each team is in for.

My previous article for Forbes delved into that territory, and why the Denver Nuggets will need to take advantage of their ostensibly favorable schedule in order to stay in the hunt for the franchise’s first NBA championship.

Here, we zoom in on a more granular game-by-game scale to highlight 18 of the more exciting, noteworthy and intriguing matchups on the Nuggets’ schedule. Why 18? The number is frankly arbitrary, representing just under a quarter of the team’s regular season games, with an eye on limiting the recommendations to a manageable number – despite the difficult challenge of narrowing the list down by making some tough cuts.

As an approach to choosing the games, I attempted to cover a large swath of the league’s top competition, albeit with a greater emphasis on Western Conference opponents, while also trying to make some room for compelling subplots such as the first return of the recently-traded Will Barton III and Monte Morris to Denver in their new Washington Wizards uniforms. Games played on the second nights of back-to-backs were generally avoided for the all-too-important reason that both Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. stand a good chance of being held out of many, if not most or all of those contests as they continue rounding into form coming off their extended injury absences.

Additionally, nationally televised matchups were prioritized due not only to the wider prominence those games have, with a brighter spotlight shining on the Nuggets on that bigger stage, but also since a major segment of the local Denver fan base in Colorado still remains unable to watch games on Kroenke Sports and Entertainment’s regional network Altitude, as its ongoing dispute with Comcast appears to be entering its fourth season with no clear end in sight. And as long as that conflict remains unresolved, this season’s increase in the number of Denver’s national broadcasts represents an important silver lining for those fans. For many, those will be their only opportunities to legally view Nuggets games.

And with those caveats out of the way, let’s get to it.

18 Denver Nuggets Games To Circle On Their 2022-23 Season Schedule

October 21, 2022, @ Golden State, 10:00 PM, ESPN

While the Nuggets will open their regular season on the road against the Utah Jazz, the wind got taken out of the sails of what might have been a marquee game after Rudy Gobert got traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves, rendering Utah a rebuilding, or at least semi-rebuilding team. So for the first game on this list I’ve gone with Denver’s second game of the season, also away, but in a much more captivating matchup against the defending champion Golden State Warriors – who just so happened to eliminate Denver in the playoffs last April. It’s Jamal Murray versus Steph Curry, and a chance for the Nuggets not only to get a small measure of revenge, but also to demonstrate that things might have gone differently had they been at full strength in the postseason.

October 22, 2022, vs Oklahoma City, 9:00 PM

In an unfortunate development for Nuggets fans (and arguably a bigtime blunder by the NBA schedule makers), the long-awaited return of Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. to regular season action on their home court at Ball Arena will have to wait until the team’s third game of the season, when Denver hosts the Oklahoma City Thunder in their home opener. And though it may also be good for the purpose of winning that OKC isn’t top-flight competition, they should not be underestimated as easy pushovers. Loaded with fun, young players, the Thunder have some real talent in guys like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Josh Giddy. (Very regrettably, it was recently announced that this year’s second overall draft pick Chet Holmgren will miss the entire season, or he would undoubtedly be OKC’s top draw.) But as enjoyable as those players may be to watch, at the end of the day, this one is all about the big homecoming for Murray and MPJ.

October 26, 2022, vs L.A. Lakers, 10:00 PM, ESPN

Two things can be true at the same time. True, the Lakers have mostly been a mess since winning the 2020 championship in that year’s NBA bubble, when they ousted the Nuggets from the Western Conference Finals along the way. But also true: LeBron James is LeBron James, and he remains one of the league’s top draws. Alongside Anthony Davis (and possibly Russell Westbrook if he hasn’t been traded yet), James will be looking to lead Los Angeles to a bounce-back season after failing to make the playoffs. And that is a party the Nuggets will definitely relish the opportunity to spoil, especially on national TV.

November 11, 2022, @ Boston, 7:00 PM, NBA TV

After the Celtics won the East and took the Golden State Warriors to six games in the Finals, they are now the odds-on favorite to win the 2023 NBA championship. When the Nuggets embark on their first Eastern Conference road trip, they’ll face their biggest challenge in Boston against the big wing duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who are backed by a deep, tough roster with almost no defensive weaknesses. As such it looks to be an instructive litmus test for how well Denver will have come together three weeks into the season as new teammates adjust to and jell with each other.

November 25, 2022, @ L.A. Clippers, 10:30 PM, NBA TV

Just as Denver is thrilled to get Murray and Porter back into the mix to make the Nuggets whole again, the same is true for the Clippers with two-time champion and five-time All-NBA star Kawhi Leonard, who last played in the 2021 playoffs before being sidelined by an ACL tear. It will be this season’s first test for both of these reconstituted teams against each other, and the fact Denver came back from a three-one deficit to send Los Angeles fishing in the second round of the 2020 postseason – a series in which there was no love lost between either team – adds a juicy layer of drama to this match.

December 6, 2022, vs Dallas, 10:00 PM, TNT

The Nuggets will host the Mavericks and Luka Doncic, who Vegas oddsmakers have tapped as the 2023 MVP favorite, in their first game of the season to be broadcast on TNT. While conventional wisdom has regarded Dallas as taking a step back this offseason after losing their second-leading scorer Jalen Brunson to the Knicks in free agency, anytime Jokic and Doncic face off, two of the NBA’s top-five players, both hailing from their respective Balkan homelands of Serbia and Slovenia, it’s must-see TV.

December 14, 2022, vs Washington, 9:00 PM

This game marks the aforementioned return of Will Barton and Monte Morris, two longtime Nuggets stalwarts who were instrumental in helping usher in Denver’s growth in the Jokic era. And although all the former teammates on both sides will undoubtedly be happy to see each other on a personal level, it may not be such a warm welcome for Morris and Barton on the court, as Denver should be heavily favored in this one.

December 20, 2022, vs Memphis, 10:00 PM, TNT

Entering his fourth season on the heels of making both his first All-NBA and All-Star teams, Ja Morant has quickly become one of the most exciting and promising young players in the league, in tandem with his Grizzlies squad. Jaren Jackson Jr. may still be out this early in the season after having foot surgery in June, but even if so, any matchup between these two highly entertaining teams merits a circle on the calendar.

December 25, 2022, vs Phoenix, 10:30 PM, ESPN

The first marquee Nuggets game to leak out prior to the official schedule release, as first reported by the Denver Post’s Mike Singer, was their Christmas Day matchup against the Phoenix Suns. Denver was finally chosen for that prestigious slate of games after being snubbed from the lineup last year despite being helmed by the reigning league MVP Nikola Jokic (in another short-sighted move by the schedule makers). The Nuggets have lost four of the five games they’ve played on the holiday in franchise history, so they should be motivated to start rectifying that record – especially after getting swept by the Suns in the second round of the 2021 playoffs.

December 30, 2022, vs Miami, 9:00 PM

The Heat have the fourth-highest win total projection in the East according to Vegas, after Boston, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Like Dallas, some considered them perhaps taking a step back this offseason with the loss of P.J. Tucker, but with a still-solid roster led by the All-Star pedigreed trio of Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Kyle Lowry, they remain one of the East’s more formidable foes. And the matchup between Jokic and Adebayo, one of the league’s best defensive centers, is always popcorn worthy.

January 5, 2023, vs L.A. Clippers, 10:00 PM, TNT

The Clippers are the first team to make a second appearance on this list. The Nuggets’ late November game with Los Angeles may be compelling as a first look at how these two rejuvenated teams stack up, but that’s only about one month into the season. But by January, both teams will be much closer to the caliber they should become by the playoffs, meaning that this game figures to be more enlightening as a genuine measuring stick for how these two teams will match up when it really counts should the meet up in the postseason.

January 18, 2023, vs Minnesota, 10:00 PM, ESPN

Both the stakes and the drama of this Northwest Division rivalry got ratcheted up to the extreme this offseason with the series of moves that not only saw Tim Connelly bail on the Nuggets to accept a more lucrative Timberwolves offer as their president of basketball operations, but also, as mentioned earlier, saw Connelly make arguably the biggest free agency splash by giving up a massive haul of draft picks and players to acquire Gobert. Unless things go unexpectedly poorly for either, these two teams will be battling it out for the division title. The always-compelling Jokic-Gobert rivalry will thus remain fully intact despite the trade, and the decision to build a new “twin towers” by pairing the latter with Karl-Anthony Towns is very transparently a design on dealing with the MVP. And as if all of this weren’t enough, just the chance to watch rising star sophomore Anthony Edwards alone is worth the price of admission.

January 28, 2023, @ Philadelphia, 3:00 PM, ABC

Debuting a new schedule feature for this season, the league announced that “NBA Rivals Week” will be held from January 24 to January 28. And while Denver and Philadelphia are not true rivals on the team level, the NBA is billing this as “a matchup of the top two big men in the game today” who “have finished as the top two finishers in the Kia MVP race in each of the past two seasons.” After the 76ers somewhat quietly put together a roundly praised offseason, Denver will have their work cut out for them in a hostile Philly atmosphere. And while by all accounts Jokic and Embiid appear to have no personal beef with each other (which one would never know from the endlessly raging MVP and best center debates on Twitter), watching them go head-to-head simply can’t be missed, especially since the 76ers will surely be out for revenge after the Nuggets staged a dramatic comeback victory on their home court in the two teams’ previous meeting.

January 31, 2023, vs New Orleans, 10:00 PM, TNT

It’s hard to know quite yet what to make of the Pelicans, primarily because it’s hard to know what the health status will be of their tentpole player, number one overall 2019 draft pick Zion Williamson. But New Orleans made a late surge without him last season, improving their winning percentage to .565 after the All-Star break from a lowly .390 before it, and when Zion is fully healthy, the one-man wrecking crew he brings to the court makes him one of the most transfixing players to watch in the NBA.

February 5 and 7, 2023, @ and vs Minnesota, 10:00 PM, TNT

Okay, so I cheated a bit here and rolled two games into one. But taking into account all of that talk of high stakes and drama above, these two consecutive games represent the third and fourth, which is to say the last two between the Wolves and Nuggets this regular season, meaning the balance not only of the Northwest Division, but also the Western Conference standings, could be heavily impacted by the outcomes, and how they affect both win-loss records and tiebreakers. If either team were to win both these contests it could, for example, mean the difference between securing home court advantage in one or more playoff series.

March 3, 2023, vs Memphis, 10:00 PM, ESPN

Along similar lines as the inclusion on this list of a second Clippers game, both Denver and Memphis should be more fully-formed, “real” versions of themselves by this point in the season, with all of Murray, Porter and Jackson Jr. having had more time to ramp up and reacclimate. And although they’re not in the same division, with both being among the top teams in the West, it’s more than likely that they’ll be thick in the mix of jostling for playoff seeding down this final stretch of the season.

March 25, 2023, vs Milwaukee, 9:00 PM

In what might loosely be seen as a preview of this matchup, yesterday Jokic led his Serbian national team to a victory over Giannis-led Greece in a 2023 FIBA World Cup qualifying match, with both players showcasing why they’re two of the best on the planet. Perhaps just because they’re not aligned positionally, Jokic-Giannis or Embiid-Giannis comparisons and debates don’t get nearly the attention or the emotional reaction from fans generated by Jokic-Embiid discussions get. But the matchup between this international duo which together won the last 4 MVP awards is every bit as gripping, maybe even I of how disparate the differences are in their skill sets and styles of play.

April 6, 2023, @ Phoenix, 10:00 PM, TNT

While there is a chance that one or both of these teams might have postseason positioning locked up and could be periodically resting players this late in the season – Denver’s third-to-last game – they also both sincerely relish the chance to beat each other, and my money would be on all parties involved wanting to put their best foot forward in this one. It won’t be nearly as hyped as their first season matchup on Christmas, but if the standings are tight, it stands a good chance of actually being more consequential.