Cam Johnson got his own long rebound off a missed 3-pointer midway through the third quarter Monday night, in a Minnesota Timberwolves–Denver Nuggets series that’s been cruelly dragged through hell. He pitched the ball to Nikola Jokic stationed at the top of the arc while slowly moving backward, effectively setting a back screen for a darting Jamal Murray, who was left wide open for a reverse layup off a Jokic lob. A full decade of the Jokic-Murray connection ought to have made the moment feel banal. Instead, the sequence in a do-or-die Game 5 felt like a necessary course correction after a discombobulated Game 4 in which the Nuggets chose defeat in a clash that a cruel fate had seemingly handed them to win.
There was a miscommunication during Denver’s loss on Saturday that felt emblematic: Jokic reflexively tossing a casual, over-the-shoulder lob to Aaron Gordon, in the same way that he’d done hundreds of times over the years. But Jokic was throwing the ball to a ghost. Gordon, in his compromised state with calf and hamstring injuries, couldn’t make the jump. He’d exit Game 4 and sit out Game 5 due to calf tightness, with his future availability remaining in question. The lob to Murray on Monday night was Jokic returning to his senses, recalibrating to the reality of Denver’s situation rather than letting his reflexes attempt to reanimate what’s no longer there. It was, in a sense, a small fragment of nature healing amid a series that has left both the Wolves and Nuggets broken.
A low thrum of tension seemed to reverberate through Ball Arena on Monday night—frustration without a clear channel, anxiety without a clear salve. Series provocateur Jaden McDaniels, who broke from decorum at the end of Game 4, got the kind of heat that any wrestling heel would kill for. Nuggets head coach David Adelman was met with boos from the frustrated home crowd when he was announced pregame. His terse responses at the start of Monday’s postgame presser—even after a convincing 125-113 win—suggested that the pressure is still on the Nuggets to not fuck up this scenario that they’ve been bestowed, where they serve as the favorite to win a series they once trailed 3-1.
Anything less than a decisive victory from the Nuggets on Monday night would have been inexcusable after catastrophic injuries to Anthony Edwards and Donte DiVincenzo left the Wolves prone. Teams crawl out of holes in the playoffs one game at a time. And so for one night, Denver did what it needed to do against a team that had relied on a short rotation all season long. The Wolves’ usual starting lineup played the most minutes of any five-man lineup in the league during the regular season—and nearly twice the amount of time as the Nuggets’ most frequented lineup. Wolves coach Chris Finch was forced to stretch a rotation that, even at its best, was severely lacking in supporting backcourt talent. Denver ramped up its pressure and cordoned off the paint in Game 5, putting a mirror up to Minnesota’s lack of creation and ballhandling. The Wolves totaled 25 turnovers—the highest single-game figure of any team in the playoffs.
Minnesota’s rotational crate-digging (as well as the Nuggets’ own injury woes) allowed Denver to experiment with lineup adjustments. Late-season signing Tyus Jones gave Murray the space to work off the ball; Jonas Valanciunas was suddenly a viable option to patrol the paint given Minnesota’s sudden lack of rim pressure. But Game 5’s most unlikely hero was Spencer Jones, who admirably filled the void Gordon’s injury created. Jones played more than 36 minutes—double what he had averaged in the four games prior, and more minutes Monday night than any Nugget not named Jokic or Murray. Jones was hot from deep, which has become a common humiliation ritual for opposing teams this season. Jones’s wonky form is a moonshot—nothing to do with the arc and everything to do with his body seemingly involuntarily crunching to the side, forming an inelegant crescent as he releases the ball in midair. But it’s hard to argue with results: He’s shooting 41.6 percent from 3 across the regular season and the playoffs combined.
Nuggets fans spent all Monday night telling McDaniels that he’s a POS (and we’re not talking about Rhymesayers). Jones, on the other hand, might spend the next few days figuring out how to spin his career night into his latest LinkedIn treatise on the importance of system integration in PoS. “I got some ideas circulating in my head. I got two days before the next game—I got some time,” Jones said after the game. “You guys can wait on your heels for that one.”
This isn’t how anyone predicted the series would go, one way or the other. It’s been a flawed series in a near-perfect rivalry, and the teams continue to find new ways of reaching a cosmic balance. After the teams played 33 games since the start of 2022-23, Minnesota is now ahead 17-16, with an average margin of victory of just over two points per game. Minnesota secured a 3-1 lead on Saturday, a position from which 95.6 percent of teams have advanced across NBA playoff history—but how many of those teams experienced the kind of sudden misfortune that the Wolves suffered over the weekend? Losing not just one, but two members of your starting backcourt? The Wolves are as close to and as far from closing out the series as possible. Saturday’s win was proof of how precisely Minnesota can channel its fuck-you energy; Monday’s loss was a sobering reminder of how much talent has suddenly vanished from its rotation.
Anything can happen at home, anything can happen on the brink of elimination. The Nuggets have a clear advantage moving forward, but the Wolves do have one thing on their side: the stark contrast in expectations for Game 6, and, should it come to it, the one after that. Both teams are fighting wounded, but the impact of each team’s injuries isn’t equal. McDaniels stirred the pot at the end of Game 4, and was tied with Rudy Gobert for the lowest plus-minus in Game 5. Yet, he sat at the podium after the game with a grin. After all, what consequences could be more dire than losing your franchise megastar for the foreseeable future?
“I love this environment, everyone hating me. I feed into it. It just brings out the best of me,” McDaniels said. “We just ended up losing the day, but we're going to win the next one.” The Wolves return home with a sense of weightlessness. They may be severely compromised, but if there is any trump card left for them to play, it’s the fact that they can play freely. For as many games as there are left, the pressure is on the Nuggets to bear.
