Banged-up Wilson Chandler ready for Nuggets' "biggest game of the season"

DENVER — Whenever Wilson Chandler rose up to shoot Tuesday, an impediment he’d never had to deal with before sat directly in front of his face.

The Nuggets’ starting small forward fractured his nose against Oklahoma City on Friday after Russell Westbrook inadvertently caught him with an elbow. The injury caused Chandler to miss Sunday’s game, but he returned Tuesday wearing a clear plastic face mask.

“The first time was pretty uncomfortable for me,” Chandler said afterward with a white bandage covering his nose. “I always have to fix it and make it tighter on my face. It doesn’t fog up that much, but once it gets sweaty it gets loose and I have to keep tightening it.”

Despite the distraction, Chandler managed to score in double figures in the Nuggets’ 107-104 win over the Pacers. Chandler shot 3-9 from the field. All three of his makes were three-pointers he connected on in the third quarter. Chandler received a generous bounce on the first long ball, but the other two that fell in were pure.

Chandler finished with 10 points and six rebounds in 31 minutes of action. All five of Denver’s starters scored at least 10 points — the 14th time that happened this season. The Nuggets are 10-4 in those games.

“He looks funny,” said Nikola Jokic, who scored 30 points, grabbed six rebounds and handed out seven assists. “He looks funny anyway.”

The Nuggets picked up their consecutive win in Chandler’s return to the lineup. After earning wild overtime wins over the Thunder and Bucks, Tuesday’s win over the Pacers came a little more comfortably even though Denver only won by three. The Nuggets led by eight points with 11 seconds to play. A couple of garbage-time Pacers buckets made the score seem closer than it was.

“Wilson Chandler, it wasn’t easy for him to play tonight,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “For those of you athletes out there, there’s not many of you, when you play with a mask your first game back it’s hard very hard. I think you saw that in the first half. He finally found his rhythm in the second half. He saw the ball go in the second half. I admire him coming out and playing and playing as hard as he did tonight.”

With only four games to go, the Nuggets are 1/2 game back of the eight-seeded New Orleans Pelicans and one game back of the seventh-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves. Denver and Minnesota still must face each other twice. The first meeting is Thursday in Denver.

“It’s going to be the biggest game of the season for us,” Chandler said. “We have to come in and be ready from the start to finish.”