DENVER — Portland Trail Blazers guard Rodney Hood exited their 100-96 series-clinching Game 7 win over the Denver Nuggets midway through the third quarter with what the team termed a hyperextended left knee.
Hood went down awkwardly after taking a back screen from Nuggets guard Torrey Craig. Hood immediately grabbed at his leg and remained down on the floor for a couple of minutes before being helped to the locker room. The team listed Hood’s status as questionable, but he did not come back into the game.
After the game, Hood told reporters that he’s “in a lot of pain right now.”
“We’ll see how it feels tomorrow, and the next day,” said Hood, who had six points in 20 minutes before being helped into the locker room. “Just day-by-day, but I don’t have a timetable right now.”
He added: “I don’t know what happened. I was just backpedaling and something happened, and my knee was burning a little bit.”
Hood has been a matchup issue for Denver, with the Blazers seeking switches for Hood and smaller defenders. Hood has been a breakout player in this series for the Blazers, a player Nuggets coach Mike Malone called Portland’s “MVP” of the series prior to Game 7. In Game 6, Hood scored 25 points on 8-of-12 shooting.
Hood is shooting 60.4 percent in the series, the best of any player. He is shooting 57.9 percent on 3-pointers.
“To me, Rodney Hood is to me the MVP of the series,” Malone said Saturday. “Damian Lillard is a superstar. You know what you’re going to get with him. CJ McCollum is a potential All-Star, so you know what you’re getting with him. But Rodney Hood in their three wins is at 20 points a game, 61 from the field, 54 from 3. So we have to do a better job of guarding him and game planning for him when he comes in.”
Along with Zach Collins, Hood started the second half of Game 7 in place of Moe Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu.
ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk contributed to this report.