Five Takeaways From the Nuggets’ Collapse Against the Timberwolves

The Denver Nuggets’ win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in their playoffs series opener on April 18 had many loyalists convinced that the squad was lined up for a sweep. After all, Nikola Jokić and company had turned in a subpar performance but somehow managed to best their Western Conference rivals by double digits. All they needed to do was play up to their standards (not even beyond them) and victory was assured, right?

Maybe — but that’s not the way it happened on April 20. Denver looked alternately amazing and putrid en route to a a 119-114 defeat at Ball Arena that evened the series at 1-1.

How the hell did that happen? These five takeaways provide often-painful answers and serve as a warning for what could turn into one of the worst post-season desserts ever.

No Lead Is So Large That the Nuggets Can’t Blow It

In the first quarter of game one, the D-men shot like the drunkest golfers on the driving range. Open look after open look led to more clanking than the chain-wearing precursors to Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. And while Jamal Murray eventually racked up thirty points, aided largely by sixteen made free throws, his accuracy from beyond the arc was a perfectly imperfect 0-8.

The plan for the second game was clearly to get Murray untracked early, and it seemed to work. He swished his first three pointer, and plenty of his teammates found nylon, too, producing an edge that quickly ballooned to nineteen.

That didn’t mean that the rest of the contest was a foregone conclusion. The Nuggets have a well-deserved reputation for kindly, oh-so kindly, giving back hefty leads, for reasons that team psychiatrists have no doubt been exploring for ages — and on a Monday night when the opening tip didn’t go up until nearly 9 p.m., it happened again.

Despite the fact that Rudy Gobert, the Wolves’ defensive stalwart, had to sit on the bench with around nine minutes prior to half time after registering his third foul (more on that later), the Nugs went into their generosity mode again, allowing Minnesota to more than erase the deficit. Indeed, Denver would have trailed at halftime had not Murray canned a ridiculous half-court heave an instant before the buzzer sounded, resulting in a 64-64 tie.

Jamal Murray Needs to Stop Being Cute

Murray led the Nuggets in scoring for the second consecutive match with thirty points, the same total he recorded over the weekend. Moreover, he went six of fourteen from deep — but he also engaged in the sort of showboating that led to diminishing returns, with two unnecessarily fancy passes transforming into turnovers in the opening minutes. True, he only gave the ball away a couple of more times over the course of the night, but several of the attempts only led to style points, not the kind that pop up on scoreboards.

In the end, he only sank eleven of his 25 shooting, leading to a completely meh -4 efficiency rating during the time he was on the floor. Yeah, yeah: Jamal is at his best when he’s playing freely. But on several occasions, that translated to the sort of ego-driven stupidity that proved costly in the end.

Anthony Edwards Isn’t Nearly as Injured as He Seemed

The Timberwolves’ star has been dealing with a knee injury over recent weeks, and he was clearly self-conscious about it during game one, grabbing at the joint on several occasions and generally steering clear of the blitzkreigs to the basket that make him so dangerous. In the first quarter on Monday, the scenario seemed similar. But after the Wolves went down big, he gave his usual strategy a try and found that it worked great. Again and again, he launched himself toward pay dirt, knowing that Jokić, presumably the last obstacle ahead, wouldn’t put up much of a fight for fear of getting into foul trouble.

Edwards was rewarded for this strategy with a thirty-piece that essentially negated all of Murray’s production. Worse, the performance reminded him that he can do the same things again as the series continues (something the NBC announcing crew mentioned early and often).

To that, Nuggets Nation should respond with a collective, “Oh, shit….”

Jokić Must Take Advantage of Non-Gobert Minutes

As he did in game one, the Joker deferred for the initial twelve minutes, preferring to keep his comrades happy rather than taking any pleasure from scores of his own — and for a while, it worked. By allowing Gobert to push him far from the paint, he opened up the lane for the rest of the crew, who happily padded their own stats. But when Gobert began riding the pine midway through the second, he should have pivoted to a more offensive mindset against defenders such as Julius Randle (much improved from game one; he came through with 24 points) and Naz Reid (ditto; his eleven points were key).

Jokić didn’t contribute mightily to the Nuggets’ lead, which went the way of all flesh by intermission — and while he corrected this mistake in a third quarter with a sixteen-point outburst, he wound up exhausting himself prematurely. By the final stanza, he looked utterly gassed, and Murray did, too. (Insert your own fart joke here — and then imagine that sound during their every miss down the stretch.)

D That Dammed Fence

When Murray and Jokić went dry in the fourth quarter, the rest of the Nuggets had two choices if they wanted to capture a W: either start making buckets of their own, or prevent the Timberwolves from doing so. Unfortunately, they wound up choosing neither option. The Wolves downed 29 points to the Nuggets’ 21 through sheer force of will — the kind Denver must demonstrate on the road Thursday night if they don’t want to repeat the heartbreak of 2024, when Minnesota sent them home for the season.

All is not lost, but the confidence engendered by Saturday’s win is looking mighty shaky right now.