The basketball robot programmed to troubleshoot and negate any problem with relative ease encountered a worthy brain-teaser Saturday night.
How does one center adjust to a team that’s able to throw three capable and well-rested bigs at him throughout the course of a game?
Nikola Jokic was actually stumped.
“Have a duplicate clone of myself,” he said finally. “And then I can be fresh when they sub another guy.”
After the Nuggets’ 106-99 Game 1 loss at Ball Arena, no other comment more fittingly epitomized the daunting uphill battle they face in the Minnesota Timberwolves.
“They already were a good team last year, so we know this team is very good,” Michael Porter Jr. said. “We know it’s gonna be a long series. And it’s gonna be a good series. We’ve just gotta get the next one.”
If they don’t get the next one Monday, they’ll be presented with an adversity the likes of which they haven’t had to deal with in multiple years. Going to Minnesota down 2-0 is not an option if Denver wants to repeat as the NBA champion.
“We’re the defending champs. We’ve gotta act like it,” Christian Braun said. “I think everybody’s confident. Everybody knows we’ve got the ability to come back from this. It’s one game. First to four. You can’t get too high or too low.”
Tim Connelly built the Nuggets, so it’s only logical that he’s the best-equipped executive in the NBA to craft a team that’s designed to beat the Nuggets. Jokic is in for a true grind.
The Timberwolves are clearly comfortable with their primary coverage, in which Karl-Anthony Towns matches up on Jokic while likely Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert lurks from the perimeter to the paint, doubling as a dam denying Aaron Gordon on lobs, and as a last line of rim defense if Jokic attacks. (He can be both simultaneously because he’s so good.)
But they’re also comfortable with Gobert guarding Jokic straight-up whenever Towns is taking a breather. Or with Naz Reid daring the officials with additional interior physicality off the bench.
Jokic turned it over seven times in the series-opening loss. And now Denver is in uncharted territory — trailing a series for the first time in the last two postseasons.
“It is a foreign feeling,” Peyton Watson said. “… For us, it’s just a learning experience, and we’re gonna be better. What championship team hasn’t faced adversity?”
Defensively, the Timberwolves just keep coming. Their bench’s net rating of 3.1 was the best in the Western Conference this season. They’re versatile enough in their starting lineup to cross-match without it reeking of desperation. Jaden McDaniels’ wingspan is always an irritant for Jamal Murray, but Anthony Edwards also happens to be talented and competitive enough to pick up the opponent’s best guard at half-court with suffocating point-of-attack defense — all while scoring a game-high 43 points.
“They’re long. They’re physical. They’re making you make or take tough shots,” Jokic said. “And it’s not just that. They know what they’re doing on pick-and-rolls. They put a lot of good defenders on Jamal and Reggie (Jackson) in the pick-and-roll.”
Scoring droughts are supposed to be the counterbalance, the reason Minnesota is an underdog despite its top-ranked defense. It’s supposed to be an Ant-dependent offense to a fault, lacking the late game identity that Denver possesses.
But the Nuggets allowed the Timberwolves to shoot an alarming 71% from the floor in the second half. Edwards was Minnesota’s only player who missed multiple field goals after halftime, and that was only because he attempted 12 (and still made seven, overcoming an increase in double-teams).
Towns found a rhythm after the break. More detrimentally, role players Mike Conley and Naz Reid combined for 30 second-half points by making 12 of 13 shots. They had each been scoreless at halftime.
“It’ll be a quick exit if we allow four guys to get off like that,” coach Michael Malone said.
Minnesota’s clutch time offensive rating in Game 1 resembled Denver’s dominance over the Lakers: 200 sharp, or an automatic two points per possession.
“We can live, of course, with a bank shot for Naz or for Rudy,” Jokic said, referring to a pair of baskets in the fourth quarter. “But there were some easy, easy (baskets), basically layups. Some of them were matchups, probably. Some of them were concepts. And some of them were just guarding. … It’s a little bit of everything. It’s not just one thing. But yes, maybe if we have a mismatch we need to help a little bit more. Just to try to be physical. Try to be really aggressive.”
Malone made a straight line from the court to the podium for his postgame news conference, fed up with the lapses his team was prone to but never quite burned by during the first round. “Forty-eight minutes,” he said. “You can’t play a half of basketball in the Western Conference semifinals.”
Meeting that challenge has become a matter of mental strain for the Nuggets recently. Against the towering, terrifying Minnesota Timberwolves, it’s going to be a physical burden as well.