DENVER — The Minnesota Timberwolves flipped the script.
The Denver Nuggets are one of the best teams in the league at home in the first quarter of this era, with this starting five. They get out to great starts behind their soon-to-be-three-time MVP Nikola Jokić and a dynamic starting five that has a world of experience together. The Nuggets are also the second-best offensive team in clutch time (inside five points in the last five minutes) and the second-best defense in clutch time. They beat the Lakers in five games largely because of their clutch-time heroics, including two Jamal Murray buzzer-beaters.
The Wolves are a notoriously slow-starting team. They were good in the clutch, 21-15, but not elite. And yet in Game 1, the Wolves jumped out to an 18-4 lead, punching the Nuggets' starters in the mouth to put themselves in a good position, and then closed with ferocity.
And Anthony Edwards was pure Minnesota Ice, cold-blooded from start to finish. Edwards scored 43 points on 17-of-29 shooting, shredding Denver's best perimeter defenders in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Aaron Gordon. He scored the Wolves' last six points to ice the game, and eight of their last 10.
Jokić is typically an insurmountable offensive force, but Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid held him to 11-of-25 from the field and forced seven turnovers from the Joker.
The Wolves stayed home in single coverage on Jokić, daring him to score. The Nuggets generated 1.2 points per possession out of post-ups, but they didn't run it nearly enough to counter the 41 points the Wolves were able to generate out of the pick and roll.
Murray with an injured calf was constantly put in action by the Wolves guards — not necessarily in direct action, but as an off-ball defender.
Murray was asked to tag and recover on this rotation, and he just does not have the burst to cover for it.
Jokić wasn't passive, but Minnesota's defensive spacing and size took him out of the game he wanted. He put up numbers the way he always does with 32 points, eight rebounds and nine assists, but his overall efficiency was poor and his seven turnovers were brutal. Furthermore, the Wolves constantly put him in negative situations and he obliged. In the second half, he was caught between worlds like on this sequence.
Denver blitzes Edwards to get the ball out of his hands, so Minnesota immediately goes into a pick and roll out of the outlet valve with Mike Conley. Jokić neither plays drop to contain nor plays at the level to contest. A good screen on a banged-up KCP and it's a wide open 3-pointer.
Jokić looked tired, which is concerning after a series vs. the Lakers he failed to dominate and four days rest.
Meanwhile, the Wolves did what they did to the Suns from the start of these playoffs: look hungrier, look more prepared and go for the jugular on every possession. Their offense struggled in the first half and then went ballistic in the second half with a 165 offensive rating. They shot 71% from the field and 58% from 3-point range in the second half. Minnesota has been a team that gets better as the game goes along all season.
In Game 1, they were the hungrier team with the hungriest player on the floor in Edwards.
Edwards let folks know about it after the game, too, including this gem, regarding how he got going.
"My teammates found me for a lot of easy layups. I've never had so many easy layups in my life," Edwards said. "So it was fun."
The Nuggets trailed the majority of the series vs. the Lakers and trailed the majority of this game. At some point, the wait for the championship Nuggets is going to run up against a clock, with Minnesota now having home court, where it went 30-11 this season.
For Minnesota, nothing it did felt unsustainable. They weren't reliant on unsustainable shooting. Edwards delivered dagger after dagger and felt comfortable, slicing past Gordon and bodying Caldwell-Pope. The Nuggets' best defender on Edwards was likely second-year man Christian Braun, but Braun struggles more in screen navigation.
The Nuggets looked like a team that so far in the playoffs had fluffed around and not faced any consequences against a flawed and inferior Lakers team.
Against the Wolves, they fluffed around and found out.
Minnesota is not here for good vibes or to celebrate its first franchise sweep and second real playoff run. They are not just happy to be here.
They're not nice, they're Minnesota Ice. And they were absolutely sub-zero cold in how they executed in Game 1 en route to a 1-0 lead on the champs. Game 2 is Monday night in Denver.
