The heel, on Monday night, just could not shake the foul stench.
The first whistle on Jaden McDaniels came just over a minute after tip-off, his lanky 6-foot-9 arm bumping Jamal Murray off-balance on an elbow jumper that sung pure. The second came less than a minute later, Cam Johnson sliding into the lane to draw a charge on the charging forward. The third came on another Nuggets shot in a third quarter spiraling rapidly out of control; the fourth ignited a powder keg inside Ball Arena, tens of thousands of Nuggets fans rattling the rafters as their town’s latest most-hated McDaniels was yanked for foul trouble.
They roared in fury when McDaniels re-entered the festivities in the fourth, and any single time he touched the ball. They roared in glee any single time he missed a shot, and after most of his five fouls. In the fourth quarter, Denver’s newest villain stepped to the free-throw line and was met with a deafening — and utterly simple — sentiment.
Mc-Daniels-sucks!
He smirked at a postgame podium, hours after the Nuggets’ eventual 125-113 Game 5 win.
“Yeah, I love this environment,” McDaniels said “Everyone hates me. All the hate’s coming toward me – I love it. I mean, I don’t care. I feed into it … it just brings the best out of me.
“We just ended up losing today,” he continued “But we gon’ win the next one.”
On this night, though, the city of Denver and its Nuggets won the grudge match. With comments after Game 2, calling Denver defenders out by name, McDaniels became the central figure in a rivalry that threatens to alter the Nuggets’ course as a franchise. In Games 3 and 4, he stood on his words and leaped off them in Timberwolves wins.
In Game 5, the Nuggets finally poked back, as McDaniels scored a quiet 13 points and racked up five fouls.
“He can say whatever he want,” Johnson said postgame, one of those defenders McDaniels called out. “Nobody really reads into it. Just talk. We’re going to play our game. Itap not going to cause any emotional uproars. We’re professionals, and we’re going to keep playing our game and keep doing what we do, and keep executing the game plans that we want to execute.
“Itap not about no personal vendettas of any sort,” Johnson continued, emphasizing each consonant. “It’s about winning basketball games.”
Vendettas and strategy intertwine, though, in a series with this much emotion. Denver threw McDaniels’ physicality right back at him over the course of 48 minutes, with the kind of active hands on the perimeter and interior verticality that had been missing for much of the series. This was a “desperate” team, as Timberwolves guard Ayo Dosumnu said in the locker room. The Nuggets played like it, blitzing a Minnesota team down its two primary ball-handlers — Anthony Edwards and Donte DiVincenzo — into 25 turnovers.
“You could definitely tell they amped it up a little bit, on both ends of the floor,” Minnesota guard Mike Conley said postgame, adding he felt much of Minnesota’s sloppiness was self-induced. “They were physical. They kinda dictated the game, a little bit.”
Denver got two of Minnesota’s remaining most important players, McDaniels and Julius Randle, into foul trouble. Forward Spencer Jones, starting in place of the injured Aaron Gordon, contributed three steals and three blocks. Nikola Jokic visibly elevated to another defensive stratosphere, with a couple of blocks and numerous possessions of active drop coverage.
And in the cherry on top, backup center Jonas Valanciunas put an elbow into McDaniels’ chest and went face-to-face with him in the fourth quarter after McDaniels’ fifth foul.
“We just tell him to stay engaged, because he’s a guy that maybe — sit there and wonder for a second, and maybe get upset,” Minnesota guard Mike Conley said postgame, on McDaniels’ foul trouble. “And, no reason to. The game is called how it is, and one game we’re being physical and don’t call. This game was a game you couldn’t be as physical. So you had to kinda just adjust to that, and I think it just took him a while to adjust to it. And just stay aggressive.
“When he gets a chance offensively, be aggressive,” Conley continued. “Not get caught up in what the other team is doing. It seemed like they were trying to egg him on a little bit, and irritate him a little bit to try to get him out of his game a little bit. And I think he did a good job of handling that, throughout the game.”
It was, indeed, the most negative environment possible for McDaniels. Boos at his mere presence rung as loud as cheers for Denver’s success, the rare supplemental star who has captured the city’s attention.
Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch shrugged off any mention of the Ball Arena crowd postgame, saying he didn’t think McDaniels was “worried about the booing.” But he certainly noticed.
And McDaniels welcomed it.
“Itap cool,” he said postgame. “I mean, I like it. You see — I’m probably shaking my head the whole time they booing me. I’m laughing. So, they can’t get in my head. I already expected it to come.”
Still, if it wasn’t the crowd, Denver shook McDaniels out of any rhythm he carried into Monday night. He played just 27 minutes, with those five fouls. And he spent plenty of time sitting next to 38-year-old veteran Conley on the bench, who has seen McDaniels grow from a pup into a Timberwolf unafraid to bark.
Conley offered a few words of advice as the series shifts back to friendlier territory.
“I told him — as much hate as you’re getting tonight,” Conley told reporters Monday night, “itap going to be about 100 times more love for you when you go back to Minnesota.”
