In the first half of the Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers second-round playoff matchup, Torrey Craig suffered a nasty blow to the face, causing him to leak blood as he was helped off the court. Caught with an elbow on a rebound attempt, Craig immediately went down and held his face. Despite the training staff’s best efforts, using heaps of towels to stem the bleeding, Craig was still visibly dripping blood as he was led off the court.
WATCH: Nuggets’ Torrey Craig Leaks Blood While Being Helped Off Court
Craig is questionable to return to the lineup in game two following the shot to the face and was ruled to have a nasal contusion.
Torrey Craig is questionable to return with a nasal contusion.
While he doesn’t fill up the scoring column, Craig is an efficient shooter and has improved tremendously from deep. His outside shooting has helped carve out a steady role in the starting lineup for the Nuggets and has allowed them to keep using the human swiss-army knife, Will Barton, in his flexible sixth man role.
Torrey Craig Injury Impact
Thankfully, Craig was ruled with only a nasal contusion and not anything worse. As a result, he shouldn’t see extended missed time from the injury – even if he doesn’t make it back in tonight. We’ve seen a number of players suffer minor injuries to the nose or face and don “the mask”, which may be a viable option moving forward. The mask can sometimes bring out some extraordinary play, just ask Kobe “The Masked Mamba” Bryant, Joel “The Phantom of the Process” Embiid, or Rip Hamilton – who basically just never took the thing off.
While Craig doesn’t have the largest role for the Nuggets, he has an extremely important one. His floor spacing and athleticism are key as they force defenses to stay honest and stick to him out on the perimeter. This allows their basketball unicorn, Jokic, more room to operate inside and should his defender slide a little too far over for help, Jokic has the court vision to hit Craig with a crisp pass for a wide open look.
The Nuggets without a doubt have other players they can roll out in place of Craig but the biggest impact is the lack of depth on that front. Craig allows the Nuggets to have Barton and Malik Beasley essentially run the second unit from the wing and can afford to give their starting unit a bit more of a breather. In the short term, the loss is something the Nuggets can afford to handle but they need a healthy Torrey Craig to beat the better teams in the Western Conference.
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WATCH: Nuggets’ Torrey Craig Leaks Blood After Injury, Helped Off Court