Jamal Murray returns to lineup Monday vs. Bucks

Denver Nuggets G Jamal Murray will return to the lineup for Monday’s game vs. the Milwaukee Bucks, the team confirmed prior to tip-off. Murray was held out of Saturday’s loss to the Sacramento Kings due to a knee injury. Murray will be back in the starting lineup and we don’t have any reason to believe he’ll be under a minutes restriction after missing just one game.

With Murray back in the lineup, Monte Morris heads to the bench. The Nuggets are running Will Barton at SG with Michael Porter Jr. at SF in lineups with Gary Harris still out. With Murray back in there, Nikola Jokic takes a back seat in the scoring department. The MVP candidate is coming off a 50-point game against the Kings on Saturday. We shouldn’t see that type of performance again against the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in Giannis Antetokounmpo. So Jokic gets a slight downgrade in GPPs with Murray back and the matchup being less than ideal.

Denver is getting 3.5 points at home against the Bucks. Milwaukee has played well lately but this matchup would likely be closer to a toss up had we known about Murray earlier in the day. The Bucks are also listing Jrue Holiday as not in the starting lineup. We don’t know if that’s an error or if Holiday will be held out. Once we know more, we can make a better assessment. If you want to get ahead of the line and get the Nuggets at home getting points with Murray back, it’s not the worst idea.