Five Takeaways From the Nuggets, Who Kept Hope Alive Against the Timberwolves

Over the past week or so, local fans who had spent months predicting that the Denver Nuggets would easily trounce the Minnesota Timberwolves in the opening round of the NBA playoffs en route to another championship have looked like dumbasses. After triumphing by double digits in game one, Nikola Jokić and compadres gagged away the second contest and looked absolutely putrid in the third.

Then, to make matters worse, they fell in the fourth by a 112-96 score despite injuries to key Minnesotans Anthony Edwards (hyperextended knee) and long-distance specialist Donte DiVincenzo (ruptured Achilles). Denver also allowed Ayo Dosunmu, who registered a stunning 43 points, to resemble a future Hall of Famer in the depressing process.

Considering the aforementioned absences, the Nugs sure as hell should have won the fifth matchup on April 27, and they managed to do so by a comfortable margin if you only looked at the box score: 125-113. But it probably didn’t feel that way to many citizens of Nuggets Nation who watched it go down in real time.

Here are five things to takeaway from last night’s game with game six on the horizon.

Jokić is Better When He Gives and Receives

The Joker’s mediocre performances versus the T-Wolves to date have been irritating in part due to the unctuous praise heaped upon his primary defender, the loathsome Rudy Gobert. But these attaboys are annoying mainly because Nikola had been making more turnovers than the Pillsbury Doughboy’s wettest dreams could conceive, and failing to get his teammates involved at nearly his typical pace.

The first problem wasn’t entirely solved on Monday night, as witnessed by a fourth-quarter TO in which he essentially handed the ball to a defender during an in-bound; fortunately, he’d only committed two other freebies up to that point. But his assists were wonderfully plentiful by comparison. Nikola’s sixteen dimes had a great deal to do with the excellent production of the supporting cast (more on that later).

Jokić canned an ultra-average 27 points on his own and still looks incapable of regularly hitting rainbows from beyond the arc. (The only three that went down, out of four attempts, was a heave in the final ticks of the second quarter that probably made the lawsuit-filing dude who previously wore the Rocky-the-Mascot costume jealous.) But he was much more efficient as a whole, shooting nine-for-fifteen from the field, and proved once again that he’s more fun to be around when he shares.

A Wounded AG Looks Better on the Pine

Aaron Gordon has been hurt so much of the season that he probably had to do a lot of clothes shopping in recent months to keep his on-the-bench fashions fresh — and he’s definitely not right at present. But after sitting out game three, he slipped on his uniform again over the weekend. The move smacked of sweat-soaked desperation on the part of head coach David Adelman: A firecracker at his best, Gordon displayed all the explosiveness of a sparkler accidentally dropped into the toilet.

Last night, Gordon was scratched from the starting lineup again, and the decision was made early enough for his assorted replacements to be better prepared — and they were.

Spencer Jones was legitimately special, putting up twenty critical points consisting largely of triples. Jones may have the most awkward stroke imaginable when delivering from downtown, but four of his five attempts went in — and even though he was occasionally out of position on D, he flustered opponents more often than not. Just as key was Cam Johnson, whose eighteen points included several aggressive dashes into the paint that effectively hyped up the Ball Arena faithful.

Honorable mention goes to Bruce Brown. His seven points were modest, but his rabid defensive presence was necessary to counter the man Colorado basketball lovers have now made Public Enemy No. 1.

No wonder that attendees booed McDaniels mercilessly every time he had the ball in his hands — and in the end, his pouty glower and intermittent provocation attempts resulted in just thirteen points.

It felt like karma, at least for one night.

Pissing Away a Lead, Part 1,000,000,000,000

Considering that the Nuggets had already blown a nineteen-point advantage in the ongoing series, you’d think they’d know better than to get lackadaisical with another jumbo advantage. But no: Denver was ahead by 27 points with around ten minutes left in the fourth stanza, thanks to a thrilling barrage out of halftime, but allowed the Timberwolves to cut it to just ten with plenty of time remaining on the clock. Adelman had to reinsert Jokić and Murray to prevent another historic collapse, and they could only slow the bleeding instead of stopping it entirely.

This proclivity raises concerns for the matchup slated for Thursday in Minneapolis. The Wolves’ roster will no doubt prove stronger in such friendly environs than they did in the Mile High, so don’t expect them to come anywhere close to their 25 turnover mark on Monday. The Nuggets have come back from a 3-1 playoff deficit before, and with Edwards and DiVincenzo unavailable again, their odds are decent…but not if they get overly generous again.

In other words: Santa belongs in the North Pole, not the NBA playoffs.