DENVER — Whether the Minnesota Timberwolves are a bad matchup for the Denver Nuggets is still to be determined. Nuggets coaches and players refused to cede that big a point Wednesday night after the Wolves walked into Ball Arena and dog-walked Denver 115-95 before a sellout crowd.
What is patently clear is that Minnesota is a real issue for Denver. Minnesota has won five consecutive head-to-head matchups, dating back to the second round of last year’s Western Conference playoffs. The Timberwolves have figured out some subtle nooks that seemingly no other team has in the Western Conference when facing the Nuggets. And the results for Denver haven’t been pretty.
But the results have been consistent.
“All five, they beat us pretty easily,” Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokić said. “We need to do a better job against them. I don’t know what, but it seems like we are not playing well against them. Or maybe they don’t let us play well against them.”
Without using the dreaded phrase “bad matchup,” there are some trends that are becoming obvious, trends Denver needs to figure out. It’s very possible the teams can find their way into a playoff series, and possibly sooner rather than later. The Nuggets hold the third seed in the Western Conference. The Timberwolves are percentage points behind the Golden State Warriors for the sixth seed. The teams are for sure within shouting distance of one another.
And much to Denver’s chagrin, there isn’t a team in the NBA that makes Jokić work on both ends of the floor with the ferocity that Minnesota does. Jokić is the best player in the world, so there isn’t much you can do to discourage him from having a great individual performance. And, indeed, the book on him around the league is to make him work as hard as possible, particularly on the defensive end.
But the Timberwolves do it better than anyone, for a few reasons. Even if Jokić is able to score consistently on Rudy Gobert, Gobert makes it difficult with his length, athleticism and timing. More importantly, the Wolves double-team Jokić less than almost anyone in the league because of Gobert. Jokić is elite as a scorer. But he is so much more imposing when he adds his otherworldly playmaking to the equation. And when he gets his teammates involved, that’s when the Nuggets are at their best offensively.
On Wednesday night, Jokić scored a game-high 34 points, but the Timberwolves forced him to take a game-high 23 shots to get there. And he had only four assists. Minnesota shut his water off in terms of making plays for his teammates.
The Timberwolves didn’t let Jamal Murray get any offense going. (Ron Chenoy / Imagn Images)
And for as much as the Timberwolves made life difficult for Jokić offensively, this went twofold on the other end of the floor. Minnesota put Jokić in every pick-and-roll action. And when the Timberwolves went to a lineup of Naz Reid and Julius Randle, unique players because of their ability to handle the ball for their size, they took turns taking Jokić to the basket off the dribble. By the end of the night, Jokić was exhausted.
Denver coach Michael Malone is often fiery, transparent and doesn’t pull punches. But he gave his players some grace Wednesday night, and perhaps rightfully so. The loss to the Timberwolves represented Denver’s third game in four nights, with the previous two being emotional games against the Oklahoma City Thunder. When asked in the locker room following the loss, Denver point guard Jamal Murray said fatigue “wasn’t an excuse.” But Malone certainly put some of that into context.
“It just felt that we were a step slow tonight,” Malone said. “And that’s understandable. That’s what I was telling myself. You look at what I’ve been asking, especially of our players as of late. That’s a lot.”
What Minnesota does particularly well against Denver is shift a unique amount of offensive pressure to Jokić by taking Murray out of the equation. Besides Jokić, Murray is the Denver player with a dynamic offensive skill set, and he’s the only other player on the Nuggets roster capable of carrying the offense with the ball in his hands. But, similar to the case in the paint, Minnesota has a deep and tenacious set of perimeter defenders, almost all of whom are unique to each other. It leaves Murray, a terrific shotmaker when he is rolling, without the advantageous matchups he usually has. He shot 4-of-15 from the floor Wednesday night, finished with 12 points and didn’t make an impact on the game.
He couldn’t get separation off the dribble. Whenever he rose to shoot, there were hands in his face, contesting the shot. He couldn’t collapse Minnesota’s defense enough to create the advantages needed for Denver’s offense to thrive or for the role players to find open shots or lanes to the basket.
“They are a good team,” Jokić said. “They have the personnel to play a lot of different ways against us, so we have to find a way to start playing better when we see them.”
What is clear for Denver in a potential matchup against the Timberwolves is that it needs a healthy Aaron Gordon. He has the size and strength to defend Randle and Reid. He has the offensive versatility to be a connector between Jokić and Murray. His ability to finish on the interior would be valuable against Minnesota’s stable of big men. And he’s seemingly the only player on the roster Malone trusts in a big spot to spell Jokić.
It’s interesting that the Nuggets defended Shai Gilgeous-Alexander better in Monday night’s win than they defended Anthony Edwards on Wednesday. But even that demands context because Gilgeous-Alexander does a lot of his work 15 to 18 feet from the basket. Edwards provides significant rim pressure off the dribble, and without Gordon on the floor, the Nuggets don’t have rim protection. So, in these last five matchups, Edwards has been difficult for the Nuggets to get a handle on.
The good news is Denver doesn’t have these kind of root issues against any other team in the Western Conference. But Minnesota has been the difficult geometry question. Every team has one. And now Denver is tasked with figuring out the answer.
(Top photo of Rudy Gobert blocking the shot of Nikola Jokić: Ron Chenoy / Imagn Images)
