Momentum from game to game in the NBA playoffs (probably) does not exist. The steam one team picks up facing off against another is (usually) a combination of several factors that aren’t mere coincidence. Sometimes the tide shifts after adjustments are made, individual matchups are settled, and advantages are discovered. Sometimes one side gets hot from behind the arc (hello, Aaron Gordon!) while the other can’t catch a cold.
This is what’s happening between the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves, two heavyweight title contenders locked in an epic second-round clash that may just now be settling into a thrilling, unpredictable state of inertia. These are two amazing teams, tied at 2-2, with superstars on each side thriving at an extraordinary level. This deep into the series, both are finding different elements that work. Both are realizing they might not have a way to stop the other team’s best punch. What will happen next is anyone’s guess.
After losing two straight at home to open the series, most observers thought the Nuggets looked like roadkill. But Denver found a way to loosen a dominant Timberwolves defense and seized both games in Minnesota. It’s largely thanks to Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray rekindling their two-man game and getting comfortable in areas of the court where they’re most dangerous, but just like last season’s title-winning campaign, the contributions run deeper than just the faces of the team.
“We’re more than just Nikola Jokic,” coach Michael Malone said after the Nuggets’ 115-107 win on Sunday. “This team has a lot of talented players that have confidence and have big, big balls.”
The Wolves aren’t dead by any means, though. That’s because they have Anthony Edwards, a globe-smashing superstar who scored 44 points on 25 shots in Game 4 against an aggressive defensive game plan that repeatedly looked one step too slow. The Nuggets have found ways to create good looks for themselves on offense. But when it comes to slowing Edwards down, there still aren’t any answers. (In the fourth quarter of Game 4, Minnesota’s offensive rating with Edwards on the court was a venomous 127.3.)
“I don’t think they got any momentum,” Edwards said after Sunday’s game. “I mean, we won two games, they won two games. At this point, it’s whoever wins two games. I don’t know how people look at it, but I look at it like I’m happy. We’re competing at the highest level. I’m smiling about it because I’m happy, I’m ready to go play. If we played tomorrow I’d be ready.”
Since Game 2, the Nuggets have made sure Edwards sees several bodies in his way every time he touches the ball, impeding any clear path to the basket. Sometimes it works. Often, it doesn’t matter, thanks to an outside shot that can’t miss and feet that don’t stop moving. In Game 4, Edwards was quick enough to turn the corner on Denver’s blitzes and get around Jokic when he came up too high defending a ball screen. Look how helpless Jokic is here, basically committing an intentional foul on a night when he was hobbled by foul trouble:
Edwards was a blur on straight-line drives through several layers of defense, gliding through the air for a dunk or acrobatic reverse layup. Unlike Game 3, when he was satisfied with getting off the ball against coverages that were designed to make that happen, when Edwards came off a pick in Game 4 and saw a body in his way, he put his head down and attacked. “I was just aggressive tonight,” Edwards said. “In Game 3, I only took like 14 shots, which is not myself.”
If you’re Malone, no dramatic adjustment needs to be made with Edwards. If things get particularly dire the Nuggets coach can be more aggressive and put two on the ball before a screen arrives, but for now his strategy makes enough sense. The Nuggets just have to hope they can move their feet faster in Game 5, and that Edwards’s teammates continue to miss open looks when he delivers a pass. The margins are slim here, but Ant is irrepressible in a way that makes his team feel like no deficit is insurmountable so long as he’s on the court. (In his 45 minutes in Game 4, the Timberwolves were plus-5. In those three minutes he sat on the bench, they were minus-13.)
It wasn’t entirely a one-man show, though. When the Timberwolves match Ant’s aggression, they can be extremely efficient. Mike Conley and Jaden McDaniels both drove on Denver’s closeouts whenever a low man pulled over to take away a rolling screener:
Conley and Rudy Gobert had some success with their empty corner pick-and-rolls, including one that was tweaked to include Edwards as a second screener. Conley rejected it, drove baseline, and found Gobert with the lob.
“I think we gave ourselves plenty of chances to win that game tonight. We just made a few mistakes,” Edwards said. “I mean, they got the best player in the world, and he’s got the ball the entire game. So anytime you make a mistake, he sees it. It’s hard to beat that.”
The Nuggets can punish a mistake unlike any other team, especially when they’re locked in, utilizing the championship-level chemistry that connects their pair of generational offensive talents. Denver’s rhythm lives and dies with the most complementary, lethal, telepathic relationship in recent NBA history. In the first two games of this series Jokic and Murray weren’t able to establish any on-court bond. It was stamped out by a game plan that refused to let Jokic attack from the short roll.
In Game 4, Murray and Jokic were Old Faithful. Reputable dead-eye outside shooting helped slacken Minnesota’s weakside defense in the fourth quarter. Here’s Edwards staying home on Michael Porter Jr. instead of rotating all the way into the paint to take away a pocket pass that Karl-Anthony Towns is a beat too slow to deflect. The rest is history:
“They have a lot of really good defenders that are long and all over Jamal,” Malone said. “His ability to find Nikola in the pocket, and when that happens, that’s kind of like unlocking the Rubik’s Cube. Anything can happen after that. When Nikola has the ball in the pocket, it’s lob, it’s kick-out 3, or it’s one of the most patented, most efficient floaters in the NBA. So that’s always something that we try to go to.”
Here they get to it off a dribble handoff, with Gordon’s screen giving Murray the sliver of separation he needs to make Towns come off Jokic’s body and give up the pass back. Once again, the rest is history:
It’s a battle-tested formula that should carry the Nuggets through the rest of this series, whether Murray is triggered off a zippy handoff or screen set much higher up on the floor that then puts Minnesota in rotation before it generates a wide-open 3:
It’s so hard to beat this Nuggets team four times. Through Jokic’s prime, it might prove to be impossible. Denver creates so many problems while being able to solve enough of those thrown its way to ultimately prevail. Resiliency is in this team’s DNA, aided by elite shotmaking and an unparalleled selflessness that’s found in just about everything they do.
“What I found about our group is that they do believe in themselves and more importantly, they believe in the man next to them. And we have a group that is acting as you would hope a championship team would act. They had a bad game. We owned it, and we moved past it, and we played better,” Malone said. “What I found is Rudy [Tomjanovich] is right, man. Never underestimate the heart of a champion.”
