The Denver Nuggets and Team Slovenia have been handed a major blow. Vlatko Cancar, one of the team's more important players heading into the FIBA World Cup, suffered a torn ACL Friday during a warm-up game against Greece.

Via Mike Singer:

“Nuggets forward Vlatko Cancar suffered a torn ACL in his left knee playing for Slovenia yesterday, a source told the Denver Post. There’s no timetable for surgery as of yet.”

This is the exact reason why NBA teams don't support players suiting up for their countries. Now, Cancar will miss the entire 2023-24 campaign.

As you can see below, it looks like the injury happened after Cancar landed awkwardly following a dunk:

Just awful. There was initial positivity that the Nuggets forward could avoid a serious injury, but that's evidently not the case. It's the worst-case scenario. He registered four points in 21 minutes of action prior to exiting in the fourth quarter.

In 2022-23, Cancar averaged 5.0 points, 2.1 rebounds, and 1.3 assists in 60 regular season contests for Denver while shooting 47.6% from the field and 37.4% from three-point land. While he's not a huge contributor for the NBA champions, Cancar is a regular for the second unit. His absence will hurt even more considering they also lost Bruce Brown in free agency, the clear star of the bench last season.

To make matters worse for Slovenia, Luka Doncic also departed early with an apparent knee injury but it was reported that he will be just fine and the plan was for the Mavs star to rest in the second half anyway.