The Timberwolves Are Squeezing the Life Out of the Nuggets

Minnesota’s defensive tour de force rendered Denver unrecognizable in Game 2, which felt like an emphatic arrival for the Wolves and a new nadir for the defending champs

On a spectrum of visibility, defense in modern basketball falls somewhere between the panic-inducing speed and punishing force of football and the algorithmic erasure-by-numbers of soccer. Every possession in basketball has a higher probability of yielding points than in any other team sport, so the viewer’s mind paces itself. We look for punctuations and aberrations. End points that affirm or deny the intentions of a defense. A weak-side rejection from the low man; a block from the darting rotational defender closing out on the corner; a strip-block from the mouse in the house, whose reflexes are faster than the post player’s offensive navigation system. Moments, few and far between, that turn the improbable into the ecstatic. For the most part, that’s all one can truly hope for.

Great offenses operate like superorganisms, with a flow that can be impossible to decipher from the opposing perspective; great defenses come in crashing waves. But on Monday, in the most stunning statement win of the postseason thus far—a 106-80 rout of the defending champion Denver Nuggets at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves—the Wolves posited the inverse. They were a defensive man o’ war, operating as a unit at the same frequency and velocity, their offense a side attraction, a finishing blow. With presumptive Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert unavailable due to the birth of his first child, the Wolves pieced together one of the greatest collective defensive performances of the past two decades. It’s exceedingly rare for defense to be rendered as anything other than rigorous and thankless labor, but on Monday it almost felt like joy. It looked like it, too:

But defense is a zero-sum game. Joy on one end means agony on the other. Nikola Jokic, who will probably be named MVP on Wednesday, had one of his worst playoff performances in years. Jamal Murray was so flustered he threw multiple objects onto the court from the bench, including a heat pack that was tossed in a referee’s vicinity—which probably ought to yield disciplinary action. While I realize I’m prone to hyperbole, calling the Minnesota defense transformative doesn’t feel like much of a stretch. The intense ball pressure from the Cerberus that is Jaden McDaniels, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Anthony Edwards; the swarming length and discipline of Karl-Anthony Towns, Naz Reid, and Kyle Anderson—in concert, the Wolves threw the Nuggets into an unfamiliar state of dysregulation. One of these teams just won a championship, and the other hasn’t sniffed the Western Conference finals in two decades. You’d be forgiven for mixing them up.

Jokic, the most creative big man to walk on hardwood, couldn’t cast any spells through such tight windows. Nor could he default to Occam’s razor ball down low, where he was stymied by Reid and Towns, who both put in arguably the most impactful defensive performances of their lives. Murray, hindered by a strained left calf, was in absolute hell trying to get any step past the Wolves’ hellhounds. His and Jokic’s legendary pick-and-roll was blockaded; Denver didn’t trust anyone else on the team to be a second-side creator; the players couldn’t even swing the ball around the perimeter without feeling the squeeze.

“You can’t play Nuggets basketball if you get punked,” Denver guard Reggie Jackson said after the game. Part of what made Monday night so astonishing was watching the Nuggets’ composure wither so quickly. Jokic found new depths to how low his shoulders could slump; Murray’s exasperation manifested as the petulance of a sleep-bound child; and the supporting cast vacillated between anxious frenzy and utter resignation. The sense of inevitability Denver had against the Lakers melted under a crucible in real time. Charitably, it was, in a way, a warm welcome for new Broncos quarterback Zach Wilson: You won’t be the only athlete in town that’s seen ghosts.

Wolves head coach Chris Finch watched his team approach perfection from a row behind his usual perch, ceding play-calling duties to acting head coach Micah Nori as he recovers from knee surgery. Normally even-keeled with regards to his team’s performance, Finch showed an unmistakable pride in what his team accomplished in Game 2. “We’ve had some really, really good defensive efforts this year, but that has to be right up there with the best of them,” the man known as Finchy said after Monday’s demolition. “On the ball, off the ball, the physicality, execution of the game plan, doing it over and over and over again. It requires a physical and mental toughness—they had that.”

Gobert’s absence, which was assumed to be a net positive for the Nuggets before tipoff, highlights the disparity that has defined this series as Denver trundles up to Minneapolis down 0-2. Watching the Denver offense bury itself in quicksand, it was hard not to think about Bruce Brown’s sterling postseason run last year—the one that netted him a two-year, $45 million contract in the offseason. The pining is less about Brown himself than what he represented within the Nuggets offense: A fearless, athletic ball handler who is capable of attacking from the fringes of Denver’s pet actions. A release valve. A reinforcement of structure that can also make hay outside of it. The Nuggets simply do not have a bench they can trust, and with the threat of Murray neutralized, Jokic only has so many levers to pull with the rest of the team. That’s an enormous issue. Teams in the postseason can pare back, but they can’t add to what isn’t there. The Nuggets have no clear way to address the Wolves’ superiority in terms of athleticism or depth.

Last night felt like a new nadir for the defending champs. But it could get worse. It remains to be seen whether Murray will face any discipline for tossing the heat pack onto the court, and if it does lead to suspension, the only other point guard on the roster is Jackson, who left Game 2 with an apparent lower-leg injury. The Nuggets are held together by Jokic’s gravitational pull, and the team’s unique build and complementary skill sets are a feature rather than a bug. But the roster is full of play finishers and growing more and more devoid of secondary playmakers—and you can’t finish something that isn’t even being allowed to start. The Nuggets have ailing bodies up and down their roster, but ceding physicality is as good as ceding the rest of the series. With a compromised Murray, Denver will need Jokic to go against his natural order and double the number of shots he took in Game 2. Of course, that’s not necessarily a recipe for success, either: Jokic has attempted at least 25 field goals in 14 career playoff games; the Nuggets won only four.

Game 2 as a whole felt like a tribute to Gobert’s impact, and a shedding of lingering reputations both on an individual and team level. The numbers quaintly paint the picture. KAT and Edwards each scored 27 points, as if to honor no. 27; they combined for 21-for-32 shooting from the field, which comes out to 65.6 percent—almost identical to Gobert’s career field goal percentage. “Rudy’s driven a defensive culture here,” Finch said after the game. “I think it’s a testament to his impact, his presence, and what he’s infused into the team on how important defense is and how great we can be when we play it.”

This is the standard that Gobert has set all season—his fingerprints were all over the game, even if he was hundreds of miles away. “We got a lot of guys that I can sleep peacefully knowing they can guard those guys and make their life hard,” Gobert said back in January.

Well, he’s half-right. The Wolves have assembled one of the best defensive collectives we’ve seen in the past quarter century. On Monday, they served a masterpiece on Monday to bring the series home up 2-0, all as the team’s newest father watched from afar. But I have some news for you, Rudy: You’re not going to have a good night’s sleep again for years.