MARINA DEL REY, Calif. – If they can, they will.

That’s the message from Nuggets interim coach David Adelman surrounding Michael Porter Jr. and Russell Westbrook’s uncertain availability ahead of Game 4 at Intuit Dome. Both players are listed as questionable for Saturday’s game.

Porter sprained his left shoulder in Game 2 and toughed out Game 3 to unproductive results. Denver’s most valuable floor spacer made just 2 of 9 shots in 35 minutes of playing time in Denver’s Game 3 loss. After Adelman pulled the starters in the final five minutes, Porter headed straight to the locker room to start treatment on his bothersome shoulder. He said after the game he didn’t know if he would play Saturday if his shoulder didn’t improve.

“If Mike’s available, he’s going to play,” Adelman said. “He’s in our starting five. He stretches the floor. He didn’t shoot the ball well yesterday, but we need Michael’s presence.”

The Nuggets didn’t have Westbrook’s presence after halftime. The veteran guard is dealing with left foot inflammation. He played just nine minutes, going 1 for 5 from the field with all his shots coming from 3-point range.

“He’s still questionable. We’ll kind of gauge that as we go,” Adelman said.

“If Russ plays or doesn’t play, we’re going to take a look at our rotation. We may play different people to see who can impact the game with how they’re guarding and how we’re trying to guard.”

The Clippers didn’t have a single player listed on their injury report.

Take what’s given

Through three games both teams are daring the other’s role players to be the difference.

The Clippers have loaded up on Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic, while the Nuggets have had to force the ball out of James Harden and Kawhi Leonard’s hands at different points. Los Angeles’s role players made Denver pay on Thursday. Neither Leonard nor Harden had terribly efficient scoring nights, but Nicolas Batum (4-6), Derrick Jones Jr. (2-3), Norman Powell (3-8) and Kris Dunn (2-4) hurt the Nuggets from 3-point range.

“They’re both shooting under 50%, and they absolutely blew us out. It shows you, if you dictate to people, they have to take what you give them, and what we gave them was their role players got to shoot 3-pointers, and they made shots,” Adelman said.

“Obviously, guys make shots at home more often than they do on the road, but I give them credit. They were confident. They stepped up; they made shots.”

Denver hasn’t had the same success. Adelman chalked some of that up to the Clippers’ defensive scheme. Guys like Christian Braun, Porter and Westbrook got easy buckets off cuts for much of the regular season, but Los Angeles has taken that away for much of the action.

“Guys throughout the year that have been active cutters, they’re trying to do those things that made them successful through the season, but the way they’re guarding, everybody’s in the paint. So, if we have one person flooding the front of the rim, we need the other two people to space properly,” Adelman said. “The way they’re guarding, the goal would be to create more 3-point opportunities on the back side. We know that we don’t shoot a lot of 3s throughout the season, but you have to take what’s been given to you. I didn’t think we did that. I thought we got impatient with that, and guys were collapsing on one another, which is exactly what they want.”

Muscle up

Denver’s interim coach was content with his team’s ability to match the Clippers’ physicality for most of the first two games in Denver.

That changed once the series moved west.

“We sucked,” Adelman said of Game 3.

“We were not physical. I thought our engagement was very individually based. It wasn’t team engaged. We know that. The guys owned it today.”