After being a crucial part of the Denver Nuggets’ run to the 2023 NBA Finals, Bruce Brown accompanied former NBA journeyman Theo Pinson on the Run Your Race podcast in July. Much of what the two discussed included Brown’s rise to the NBA, his pro career, and the championship he was a part of last year.
Brown addressed who he thought was Denver’s most challenging matchup en route to the franchise’s first championship. His answer surprised many, including Pinson.
“Phoenix was our ‘toughest series,’” Brown said in air quotes. “But honestly, I would say our toughest series was–”
“The Lakers,” Pinson interjected.
“No, Minnesota,” responded Brown. “Ant and them, they just always had, I don’t know. There was just something about them. They had good players: Mike Conley, KAT, and Ant. That was our toughest series.”
The Nuggets only lost four games during their postseason run last year. They swept the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals and beat the Miami Heat in five games to win the championship. Denver used the same starting five for all 20 games. Michael Malone’s team was fortunate at times, but they always had the better roster and were levels better than their opponents.
The Minnesota Timberwolves met the Nuggets in the first round. The series lasted five games, but four were close. Game 1 was the exception, with Denver winning 109-80.
Minnesota barely squeaked into the postseason with the eighth seed after beating the Oklahoma City Thunder in the second game of the Play-In tournament. After missing 52 regular season games, Karl-Anthony Towns was still getting his legs underneath him, and Naz Reid (broken wrist) and Jaden McDaniels (broken hand) didn’t play in the playoffs. In many respects, Denver outright overmatched the Wolves. Still, they managed to give the Nuggets their hardest fight of the postseason.
Over a year later, both teams are meeting again, but this time, in the second round. With their newfound strength, Minnesota is far better equipped to take the series and advance to the Finals for the first time in franchise history. It feels like the Nuggets are their one roadblock. After that, who knows what could happen?
“For the first time…”
We’ve heard those four words a lot this season, either in the context of the first time in 20 years or the first time in franchise history. Minnesota has been setting new records all year, which hasn’t stopped in the playoffs.
Pundits were unsure about Minnesota’s ability to win in the postseason. They were a prolific regular-season team, going 56-26 and finishing third in the Western Conference. However, the Wolves invited uncertainty when the Phoenix Suns beat them 125-106 in Game 82.
“There were multiple times during Games 1, 2, and 3 — all the games where you look over, and you can see [the Suns] start to argue, start to yell at the coach, or complain about not getting back on defense,” Conley told Dan Barreiro on KFAN Wednesday afternoon. “You just see the rope be let go a little bit from different players during different moments during the games. While they’re doing that, we’re doing the complete opposite. We are getting closer and closer, tighter, more connected, louder, more physical. You could just feel the weight shifting.”
Vegas favored (-130) the sixth-seeded Suns to beat the third-seeded Wolves in the first round. However, the betting line and narrative quickly flipped after the first two games. “We didn’t keep our composure,” Suns head coach Frank Vogel told the media before the series shifted back to Phoenix. When a reporter asked what caused the lack of composure, he responded, “All of the above. We have to be better.”
Minnesota’s defense was stifling in the first two games. In Game 2, the Wolves held the Suns to 93 points and turned them over 19 times, which resulted in 31 points. More fatally, the officiating crew had an inconsistent whistle throughout the game. Phoenix let that bother them while the Wolves bottled up their emotions and maintained their workmen-like mentality.
In Game 3, the Wolves further proved that the regular season doesn’t matter come playoff time. They won 126-109, dominating on defense and in the third quarter, increasing their point differential in that frame to a mind-boggling +34. Pride and individual legacies were on the line after Game 3. “I’ve never been swept a day in my life,” Bradley Beal proclaimed, “so I’ll be dammed if that happens.”
It didn’t matter how desperate the Suns sounded while talking to the media. For the first time in franchise history, the Wolves swept a playoff series after beating Phoenix 122-116 in Game 4. Anthony Edwards brought the rain with his 40 points, 31 of which came in the second half. However, the Wolves mentally outworked the Suns again, spearheaded by one future Hall of Famer and two elite scorers. The Suns went all-in with their Big 3 of Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, and Beal. However, they could not stay synchronized for a full 48 minutes, sending Phoenix’s front office into the off-season with many questions to answer.
“Discipline has to be huge against [the Nuggets],” Conley told the media during shootaround once the team returned from the desert on Wednesday. “That comes down to not fouling, boxing out, and not getting backdoor cut – all the little things. Those things are things we can control, but [Denver] is really good at not beating themselves. They are a team that has been there and done it and has a very high IQ as a whole. We have to try to minimize those mistakes.”
After facing a team that wasn’t ready for the postseason, the Wolves will meet a team on the other end of the spectrum in the second round. The Nuggets didn’t play their best basketball in the first round against the Lakers, but the Wolves must play at an even higher level than they did in the first round. It will be a tall order, but Minnesota appears ready for it.
The Nuggets looked relatively beatable despite knocking off the Lakers in five games. They shot 30.8% from three (12th highest league-wide) and 46.3% from the floor (8th highest). Denver also committed 11.2 turnovers per game (tied for 4th most) and turned in a 113.4 offensive rating and a 109.7 defensive rating (both ranked 8th best). We expect those statistics to trend upward against Minnesota as the stakes grow.
Additionally, the Nuggets are equipped with one of the best one-two scoring punches in the NBA. Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokić can singlehandedly lead their team to gutsy postseason wins regardless of overall team output.
“When [Jamal] Murray goes well, they go well, for the most part,” Conley told the media on Wednesday. “We are going to try to limit that as much as we can. He’s a great player. He’s going to make his plays, but we have a lot of guys we can throw at him and a lot of different schemes we are going to try to throw at him in hopes that it slows him down a little bit.”
The Wolves adopted a slow-them-down mindset against Phoenix, whose big three was the only barometer for team success. No defense can completely eradicate elite scorers, but you can limit their overall production and not allow them to take games over. Minnesota’s mission was complete in that regard, particularly in individual matchups.
Below are tracking stats for Booker, Durant, and Beal against their primary defensive matchup, courtesy of NBA.com.
- Booker, when defended by Jaden McDaniels: 18 points | 4/12 FG | 2/3 3P
- Durant, when defended by McDaniels: 21 points | 9/13 FG | 0/1 3P
- Beal, when defended by Edwards: 13 points | 5 turnovers | 5/8 FG | 3/3 3P
The Wolves must find similar success against the reigning champions.
Wolves Defensive Coordinator Elston Turner and his staff will likely implement the spy-Rudy concept against Jokić, which they did in the playoffs last year. That means Karl-Anthony Towns will defend Jokić with Rudy Gobert on Aaron Gordon, but Gobert won’t defend Gordon from the outside. Instead, he will roam around the basket and play help defense on Jokić when he has the ball in the low post and live with the possibility of Gordon taking a wide-open three.
The defense on Murray will be much more dependent on 1-on-1 success, though.
Last year in the playoffs, Nickeil Alexander-Walker defended Murray more than anyone else in the league. According to NBA.com, In 40:05 matchup minutes and 182.4 partial possessions, Alexander-Walker held Denver’s starting guard to 32 points on 13 of 36 (36.1%) from the floor and 4 of 12 (33.3%) from deep while forcing him to commit six turnovers. Murray’s per-game average against NAW was 6.4 points, which is incredibly productive considering Alexander-Walker was filling in for the injured McDaniels after arriving via trade two months earlier.
NAW slides back to the bench with McDaniels fully healthy. However, his role isn’t any smaller. Much of Minnesota’s season depends on if Murray takes over games. Therefore, the Wolves must play their best one-on-one defense to contain him successfully. Thankfully, Minnesota’s coaching staff has one of the best one-two defensive punches in the NBA.
Murray does most of his damage in pick-and-rolls. Below are some of his stats when he’s the pick-and-roll ball handler in the playoffs with a minimum of 10 possessions, courtesy of NBA.com.
- 37.5 frequency % (3rd highest)
- 0.90 points per possession (3rd highest)
- 9.2 points (4th most)
- 47.6% FG (3rd highest)
- 48.8% EFG (3rd highest)
- 47.4 percentile (3rd highest)
The clip above exemplifies what makes Murray so lethal in the screen-and-roll game. He’ll score if he can get half a step on his defender. Austin Reaves was Jamal’s primary defender in the first round. He held his own, limiting the Blue Arrow to 16 of 51 (31.4%) from the floor through 152.1 partial possessions. However, Murray frequently beat Reaves in PnR situations. You must be overly aggressive and fight over screens to the point where you might be whistled for the foul. Unfortunately for Denver, the Wolves have two players capable of doing that.
Here, we see Alexander-Walker pressure Beal at the center court logo. Beal loves to go to his left, slip to the basket, and shed the defense. But NAW negated that attempt. From there, Alexander-Walker forces Beal to get the hand-off screen from Jusuf Nurkic. However, before Beal can catch the ball, Nickeil blitzes and pokes the ball free, triggering a Wolves fastbreak.
The play above has more gutsy screening defense, except it involves McDaniels. We can see Josh Okogie come and set an away-from-the-play pick to free up Durant. The second Jaden sees Okogie coming to set the screen, he offers immediate resistance before he sets it. Gobert then comes up to help, taking away Durant’s lane to the hoop. KD attempted to hit J.O. on the roll, but McDaniels swallowed up the ball.
Jaden blew up a simple pick-and-roll, starting with his physicality on the perimeter.
The last time Minnesota saw Murray was on April 10. As the tweet from Harrison Wind above points out, Jamal had relative success against McDaniels. Unsurprisingly, Murray was lethal in the PnR game with Jokić or Gordon, frequently losing Jaden behind the screen.
There are still many what-ifs as we approach Game 1, and it’s not for sure that McDaniels will guard Murray. However, that is the most probable matchup. Minnesota’s coaching staff used the three-man lineup of Edwards, Alexander-Walker, and McDaniels for 68 minutes against Phoenix. During that span, the Wolves turned in an outstanding 104.4 defensive rating. A group of guys will likely share the court frequently in some capacity. However, unlike the Suns, who have three isolation scorers, most of the Nuggets’ offense derives from Murray and whoever he is screening with, making the Wolves’ ability to contain on the ball and double intelligently that much more vital to success.
“LA chose to double-team Nikola the entirety of the series,” Malone told the media Thursday afternoon. “They chose to blitz Jamal Murray the entirety of the series in the 2nd unit. This will be a different series. We’ll see how they guard. If they want to put two on the ball, we’ll continue to get wide-open looks.”
Brown couldn’t precisely pinpoint why the Wolves were Denver’s most challenging matchup in the playoffs last season. However, Minnesota’s identity is clear this time around: defense.
Wolves-Nuggets will begin Saturday, May 4, in Denver and is the most anticipated matchup in the Western Conference. Whoever wins is in a great position to make it to the Finals. A lot has to go right for the Wolves, who have only been to the third round once in franchise history, to knock off the defending champs. However, in a season full of firsts, it’s fair to ask yourself why can’t the Wolves get over the hump and make a Finals run?
Their defense will take them to the promised land.
