The Denver Nuggets did not exactly cruise past the Chicago Bulls on Sunday night at Ball Arena, but that was never really the point. A 133-128 win in Denver's third preseason game is less about the final score than what it reveals, and this one revealed plenty: the Nuggets are still learning how these pieces fit, and they need every minute they can get.
That is why these Bulls game nights matter more than the usual preseason shrug. Last season, the Nuggets lost multiple months of time with their full five-man unit because of bad injury luck. So if David Adelman wants to see how the starters look together, he has to keep testing it now, even if that means stretching some regular ideas about preseason rotation patterns.
Cam Johnson looked ready to keep firing
Cam Johnson was the most productive offensive presence in the game, scoring 15 points in the second quarter alone while playing 25 minutes. That is the kind of burst Denver wants to see from a player brought in to make the whole operation smoother. He did not need a long runway to get going, and 5-for-7 is exactly the kind of efficient line that makes a coach feel better about the fit.
There are still questions to answer, of course, because preseason basketball is built on experimentation. But Johnson made it very easy to see why he matters to this group. If Denver is going to make these lineups hum around Nikola Jokic, it needs players who can settle things quickly rather than add more noise. Johnson did that here.
DeMar DeRozan had a rougher night
DeMar DeRozan, by contrast, had a quiet and inefficient first half. He went 0-for-4 and the Nuggets were outscored by 10 points in his nine first-half minutes, which is not the sort of line that helps settle any early chemistry debate. It is only one preseason game, so nobody should overreact as if the season depends on it. Still, the fit questions are the whole story right now, and nights like this do not make them disappear.
That is especially true when Denver is trying to work out how the broader rotation looks with Cam Johnson, DeMar DeRozan, Nikola Jokic, Marvin Bagley III, Tyus Jones and Zeke Nnaji all in the frame. Some combinations are going to work cleaner than others. Some are going to need more time, and some may need a lot more than that.
Whitmore finished the job
The ending belonged to Cam Whitmore, who knocked down a pair of free throws with 14 seconds left to clinch the win. In the grand scheme of a preseason game, that is a small moment. In the context of Denver trying to build something usable, it still counts. The Nuggets need these games to tell them what is real and what is not, and Sunday night offered enough answers to keep the conversation moving.
The final score says Denver won by five. The more useful takeaway is that this Bulls game gave the Nuggets another live look at how their pieces behave when the rotation gets a little deeper and the details matter a little more. For a team that spent too much of last season waiting on health, that is not a bad place to be.
