Nuggets shooting guard Randy Foye is out three weeks due to a small tear in his right quad, he said Tuesday.
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The issue had been an ongoing one. Originally hurt three weeks earlier, against Sacramento on Nov. 5, Foye didn’t think it was anything beyond soreness. He played — and played well — in a loss to Cleveland at Pepsi Center, scoring 28 points, but had begun to miss some subsequent practices and shootarounds as it got more sore.
After missing road games at Indiana and New York with what was then thought to be a right knee injury, Foye said he felt better when he returned.
When he took the court against the Lakers on Sunday, Foye said: “It was the best I felt since the Cleveland game. It was still affecting my shot a little bit. I could tell when I pushed off.”
And then, late in the game, he tweaked it.
On Monday, he asked to get an MRI.
“I knew something was wrong,” Foye said.
That MRI revealed the tear. The treatment is basically rest. There is no surgery involved, he said. Foye, one of the Nuggets’ top reserves, is averaging 8.4 points and 2.0 assists per game and is shooting 34 percent from 3-point range.
Expect to see more of Gary Harris, or possibly Alonzo Gee, in Foye’s absence, depending on how coach Brian Shaw wants to rotate his bench.
Shaw will have other rotation issues to think about with the absence of center JaVale McGee as well. An X-ray taken on McGee’s surgically repaired left tibia came back negative, but the big man has been experiencing pain in the shin.
“JaVale will be out tonight and maybe the next couple of games as well, for that shin area to kind of calm down,” Shaw said. “I don’t think there’s anything structurally wrong. He came down kind of flat-footed (on a play against the Lakers) and he felt the pain radiate up through his shin area.
“The other 13 guys will be available. JaVale and Randy will be on the inactive list and we’ll just have to go at it with (the rest) of them.”
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or at twitter.com/dempseypost
