Julian Strawther leaves preseason game with knee injury

Julian Strawther left the Nuggets preseason loss to the Los Angeles Clippers with a left knee injury — he went down holding his leg and was helped back to the locker room

BY JAKE SHAPIRO

Oct 15, 2026, 1:47 AM

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The Denver Nuggets have spent the preseason trying to figure out who would fill the back end of their rotation. On Wednesday night, an injury may have narrowed that question for them.

Julian Strawther left Denver’s 122-110 preseason loss to the Los Angeles Clippers at Intuit Dome with a left knee injury. He went down holding the knee and was helped back to the locker room. He is scheduled for an MRI on Thursday.

Julian Strawther rolls his leg and bends on it, awkwardly, and he is helped off the court with an injury, as Isaiah Jackson, seeing it (with replays) pic.twitter.com/enuMIS8C6h

— MrBuckBuck (@MrBuckBuckNBA) October 15, 2026

Coach David Adelman said after the game that Strawther had been, “working their ass off all summer.”

“All you can do is hope for the best,” he added.

The timing of the injury is cruel, and it’s not the first time that’s been true for Strawther.

The 24-year-old guard was having as good a preseason as anyone on the roster, averaging 14 points. He came into camp after a strong offseason and was competing with Alpha Diallo for what coach Adelman has described as the 10th spot in an expanded rotation.

“I’m trying to figure out our secondary rotation. That’s more important to me right now,” Adelman said before the team left for Los Angeles. “The starters will be fine.”

On top of that, the Nuggets have until Monday to hand Strawther a rookie-scale extension. If they don’t, he’ll likely be a restricted free agent next summer.

It was already a tough call for the Nuggets given their tight financial picture. It’s a bad break for Strawther, who has been good nearly every time Denver has played him. Injuries keep arriving at the wrong moments, and they’ve cost him chances in the high-leverage minutes where a role player proves he belongs. He’s missed time with injuries after the calendar has flipped in each of his three seasons in the NBA and it’s resulted in just 123 minutes of playoff action —18 last year — highlighted by his shooting in Game 6 of Round 2 against OKC.

Strawther is one of the better shooters on the roster, and last season he made 39% of his 3-pointers. At 6-foot-7, he’s also a sneaky-good rebounder for a wing.

If the MRI shows something serious, the ripple effects reach several players:

Alpha Diallo likely wins the rotation battle by default. He was one of the standouts of camp, and now he’ll get a longer look on the wing.
DeMar DeRozan would have to carry more of the bench scoring. That means more minutes and more creating for himself in the non-Nikola Jokic stretches.
Tyus Jones would need to hold the second unit together as a steady organizer, without one of the shooters who spaces the floor around him.
Bryce Hopkins, the two-way rookie, could turn an opportunity he didn’t expect into real NBA minutes. Two-way players are limited in how many games they can be active, though, so leaning on him for long would raise roster questions.

The hope for Strawther is that Thursday’s MRI brings better news than how the replay looked.