So much for smiling and behaving in front of the cameras.
Jaden McDaniels isn’t worried about the illusion of respect. Not in this rivalry. He wanted all the smoke Monday night after a 119-114 win over the Nuggets. The Timberwolves stormed into Denver and split the first two games of a best-of-seven playoff rubber match, and they howled with laughter on their way out.
Stone-faced, with deadly seriousness, McDaniels called out Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and the rest of the Nuggets for their poor defense.
“Go at Jokic. Jamal. All the bad defenders,” he said when asked about Minnesota’s approach on offense. “Tim Hardaway. Cam Johnson. Aaron Gordon. The whole team. Just go at them.
“They’re all bad defenders.”
Denver held the Wolves to 105 points in a Game 1 win but coughed up a 19-point lead in Game 2. Anthony Edwards led Minnesota with a 30-point double-double.
“They don’t got people that can defend the rim,” McDaniels said, “and if (Jokic) is there, we’re still more athletic than them. Just gotta be able to finish.”
Nuggets starters Gordon and Christian Braun, when asked about McDaniels’ trash talk, both shrugged and said they weren’t concerned by it. This is the third playoff series between Denver and Minnesota in the last four years. Before Game 2, Timberwolves coach Chris Finch accused the Nuggets of flopping in the series opener.
The Wolves have targeted Murray on switches and forced him and Jokic to defend in pick-and-rolls early in the series, as is standard practice for Denver’s opponents. McDaniels took aim at the Nuggets’ better defenders as well in his postgame comments, though.
The Nuggets have now lost four of their last six home playoff games against Minnesota.
“I’ve been around these guys a long time,” coach David Adelman said. “They understand what this is. They’re disappointed right now. But they know what they’re capable of. We’ve been in a lot of series like this. We’ve seen 1-1 quite a bit. So we’ll react to it positively.”
