Where Adelman has made his biggest difference is by not politicizing young players like Watson, Pickett and Nnaji. Malone seemed bent on proving to Booth they could not play, and sprinkled in their minutes so sparingly it set them up to fail.

The Nuggets were in third place when Nikola Jokic got hurt. Nine games later, as they arrived at the halfway point of the season, they had somehow found a way to ascend to second without him.

“For that to happen to me was just really weird,” he mused. “Very, very weird.”

After scoring a game-winner at the end of a 31-point night in New Orleans, Peyton Watson credited his dad for years-old basketball advice.

Jamal Murray led all scorers with 35 points after a two-game sick leave, and Peyton Watson added 31 points including the game-winner.

In December, the billionaire purchased 937,000 acres of noncontiguous land in New Mexico, according to the Land Report.