Nuggets center Jusuf Nurkic was selected to play in the Rising Stars Challenge, replacing Oklahoma City center Steven Adams, who will miss the game because of an injury.
"I thought that he should have probably have been selected initially," Nuggets coach Brian Shaw said of Nurkic.
Nurkic had planned to go back to his home country of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the break. Now he's headed to New York after playing a very solid pre-all-star-break portion of the season for the Nuggets.