Nikola Jokic always tells the truth.
The Denver Nuggets are the reigning NBA champions with Nikola Jokic, the best player in the world and the likely soon-to-be three-time MVP. They will need him to start playing like it to advance past the resurgent Minnesota Timberwolves, a fellow NBA Finals-caliber opponent.
And he knows it.
On Saturday night, after the Nuggets dropped a disappointing Game 1 at home, Jokic predictably played it cool during his postgame press conference. Even though the Nuggets got off to yet another slow start and were “out-clutched” by Anthony Edwards and his friends, Jokic didn’t seem all that troubled. This sort of even-keeled approach has served him well in his nine-year career.
But Jokic’s dry joke about Minnesota’s three primary big men — Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Naz Reid — was revealing. While undoubtedly intended as respect for his opponent, it was probably also Jokic acknowledging the tall (pun not intended) test in front of him and his team:
Jokic isn’t lying. Denver could use another viable big man, even just some spot minutes, to throw into its rotation. Because what the Timberwolves can do to the Nuggets that most other teams can’t is throw three different high-quality big men at him.
Gobert is a likely soon-to-be four-time Defensive Player of the Year. Towns is one of the most gifted seven-footers in basketball. Reid won this season’s Sixth Man of the Year honors. Even with Gobert and Towns both fighting foul trouble on Saturday, Reid came in and scored 14 fourth-quarter points while doing an admirable job defending Jokic. Meanwhile, Jokic had his second straight game with at least seven turnovers, showing that he might be cracking at carrying a heavy burden for Denver while Jamal Murray nurses a calf strain.
Should that sort of mix continue, with Minnesota’s bigs collectively trying to wear Jokic down, the Nuggets’ title defense may not last much longer. If their inconsistent play doesn’t tell the story here, then the fact that they now trail in a playoff series for the first time in two years should. In due time, they may well illustrate why it’s so hard to repeat in the NBA.
Still, there remains hope for Denver.
Jokic is seldom this uncharacteristically sloppy for long stretches. With his and the Nuggets’ backs against the wall, they have usually responded very well during this era of Denver basketball with this core. When push comes to shove, the Nuggets are doing the shoving. It’s more that they haven’t had to answer this kind of adversity in a while.
The 2020 version of the Nuggets came back from consecutive 3-1 series deficits against the Utah Jazz and Los Angeles Clippers. In 2021, without both an injured Murray and Michael Porter Jr., a severely undermanned Denver squad beat the Portland Trail Blazers after also losing Game 1 of the series at home. Heck, even during last year’s Finals, and even though they were definitively the better team, Denver rebounded from a disappointing Game 2 defeat at home to the Miami Heat to storm back and take both matchups in South Beach before eventually winning its first title in franchise history in an emphatic five games.
The Timberwolves might be different. Even beyond Minnesota’s three-headed Cerberus of bigs, Edwards is a matchup problem that Denver doesn’t have a definitive answer for. In all honesty, most teams might not have an answer for Minnesota’s strengths, which is why it wouldn’t be surprising to see it win this series.
But for now, it’s just one game and one loss. It doesn’t pay to ride the emotional highs and lows of what could be a long series, as some Nuggets veterans professed on Saturday. That is, provided they even things up at 1-1 on Monday.
Denver still has Jokic, perhaps the one player in the league who could really dig deep, go into overdrive, and turn this series into the all-out war most everyone still expects. It’s hindsight in retrospect and might just be a moral victory, but the fact that the Nuggets held a four-point halftime lead and were tied with Minnesota late in the fourth quarter despite another poor Murray shooting effort should be encouraging.
The Nuggets can win this series, but Jokic and Murray have to start playing like Jokic and Murray. Jokic specifically must be the best player on either team, something that happened in each of those previous instances when opponents actually backed the Nuggets up against the wall. Murray, meanwhile, probably can’t leave the top three of the overall hierarchy by the time the dust settles. We have yet to see it this postseason but to advance to their third Western Conference Finals in the last five seasons, the Nuggets’ franchise players will have to bring their A+ game moving forward.
No questions asked.
These Nuggets have a precedent of responding with fury when they take a gut punch. It’s been a while since they took such a vicious body blow at the hands of a terrific opponent, even longer than these playoffs.
Now they have no choice but to respond in kind and deliver.
