Nuggets land in Houston with every starter questionable

Juan Ocampo / Getty Images

Nuggets land in Houston with every starter questionable

Originally posted on Lindy's Sports | By Eman Zahra | Last updated Nov 9, 2026 6:33 PM ET

The Denver Nuggets have listed all five starters, plus DeMar DeRozan, as questionable for Monday night’s game at the Houston Rockets.

Plane trouble stranded the team in Mexico City and forced them to cancel a shootaround, ABC13 reported. Nikola Jokić, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Cameron Johnson, Christian Braun and DeMar DeRozan all appear on the injury report.

Denver beat the Indiana Pacers 114-102 on Saturday in the NBA’s Mexico City game. The team got to the airport around 9 p.m., but a series of problems with the plane kept it on the ground until a little before 4 p.m. Sunday, according to the Denver Gazette, citing Altitude Sports’ Katy Winge.

Players and coaches stayed on board until the early hours of Sunday, then went to a hotel for the night.

The whole trip stretched to three days outside the United States, Basketnews noted.

Guard Julian Strawther is the only Denver player listed as out, with a left knee sprain.Anadolu / Getty Images

The injury list is long, but the causes aren’t all the same

Jokić is listed with a right elbow sprain. Murray has a left shin contusion, Gordon and Johnson are on lower-body injury management, Braun has a calf contusion and illness, and DeRozan has back spasms.

Yahoo Sports was careful to point out that the plane delays didn’t cause every ailment on that list. Some of these designations were already there, and the travel mess has simply made them harder to read.

Guard Julian Strawther is the only Denver player listed as out, with a left knee sprain.

The Nuggets are 5-3 and come in on a two-game winning streak. The Rockets are 7-3, and this is the first meeting between the teams this season, per NBA.com. Houston has its own absences, with Clint Capela out with an ankle sprain and Steven Adams out with a soleus strain.

The biggest question is Jokić. Even if he plays, a canceled shootaround and a night spent on a grounded plane make for odd preparation. Denver can’t walk the Rockets through coverages or tinker with rotations the way it normally would.

Questionable tags often resolve closer to tip-off, and teams sometimes list players conservatively after a trip like this. The Nuggets haven’t said who will actually sit. Until they do, Houston is preparing for an opponent that might look like the one on the scouting report, or might not.

This article first appeared on Lindy's Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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