{"id":476735,"date":"2026-01-01T15:25:39","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T14:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=476735"},"modified":"2026-01-01T15:25:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T14:25:39","slug":"jonas-valanciunas-exits-early-with-calf-injury-in-nuggets-win-over-raptors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/jonas-valanciunas-exits-early-with-calf-injury-in-nuggets-win-over-raptors\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonas Valanciunas Exits Early With Calf Injury in Nuggets\u2019 Win Over Raptors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"251\" data-end=\"511\">The <strong data-start=\"255\" data-end=\"296\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Denver Nuggets<\/span><\/span><\/strong> suffered another injury concern on Wednesday night as center <strong data-start=\"358\" data-end=\"399\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Jonas Valanciunas<\/span><\/span><\/strong> was forced to leave the game early during Denver\u2019s road win over the <strong data-start=\"469\" data-end=\"510\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Toronto Raptors<\/span><\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"513\" data-end=\"797\">Valanciunas was injured late in the third quarter and said he felt a \u201cpop\u201d in his right calf. The veteran big man was making the start in place of <strong data-start=\"660\" data-end=\"701\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Nikola Jokic<\/span><\/span><\/strong>, who is expected to miss at least four weeks after hyperextending his knee earlier in the week.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"799\" data-end=\"955\">Before exiting, Valanciunas delivered a strong performance, recording 17 points, nine rebounds, four assists, and three blocks in just 23 minutes of action.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"957\" data-end=\"1267\">With Valanciunas unavailable, Nuggets head coach <strong data-start=\"1006\" data-end=\"1047\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">David Adelman<\/span><\/span><\/strong> was forced to improvise, deploying small-ball lineups that featured <strong data-start=\"1116\" data-end=\"1157\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Peyton Watson<\/span><\/span><\/strong>, <strong data-start=\"1159\" data-end=\"1200\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Spencer Jones<\/span><\/span><\/strong>, and second-year rookie <strong data-start=\"1225\" data-end=\"1266\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">DaRon Holmes II<\/span><\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1269\" data-end=\"1465\">Adelman said after the game that Valanciunas left the arena wearing a walking boot but was able to walk under his own power. Further evaluation is expected to determine the severity of the injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Denver Nuggets suffered another injury concern on Wednesday night as center Jonas Valanciunas was forced to leave the game early during Denver\u2019s road win over the Toronto Raptors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":386897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"rumors":[175],"typology":[179],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-476735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","rumors-nba-rumors","typology-injury"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2024\/05\/Denver-Nuggets.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476735"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=476735"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=476735"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=476735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}