The Timberwolves lobbed verbal molotov cocktails at the Nuggets. Jaden McDaniels called them “horrible” defenders. Coach Chris Finch labeled their stars “floppers.”

Through the first two games, there was only one conclusion to draw: the Timberwolves view the Nuggets as soft. An NBA version of Charmin.

Thursday offered a chance for the Nuggets’ to punch back, find redemption.

Instead, the Timberwolves wiped their you know what with the Nuggets, taking control of a series with an 113-96 blowout at Target Center.

Once again, the Nuggets failed to match the Timberwolves’ intensity. Once again, they were out of sync offensively. Once again, they could not get stops, falling behind by 23 points in the first half.

With a rebuilt bench, this season started with such hope. Now, the Nuggets seem like a promise broken.

They trail 2-1 in the series, but they don’t look good enough, especially with Aaron Gordon (calf) hurt again, to regain control. The embarrassment of a first-round exit looms as an uncomfortable possibility.

The Nuggets have lost plenty of playoff games the past two springs, but few have stung like this. McDaniels punked them. Flicked spitwads off the back of their heads. The Nuggets refused to engage, declining to respond on the off day.

This was a mistake. They had an opportunity to stick up for themselves, suggesting that McDaniels is a Teemu version of Jayden Daniels, and that Finch is acting desperate with his mind games.

Instead, they took the high road. Right off a cliff.

For all those who insisted the players were preserving their energy for the court, the Nuggets responded with one of the worst playoff quarters in franchise history. They scored 11 points in the opening period, shooting 3-for-21, while missing 16 of their first 18 attempts.

An anomaly? Hardly. Denver finished 28 of 82 from the field, the 34% mark their lowest of the season.

“When we got sped up by pressure, that led to some unorganized possessions. Everybody struggled from the field,” coach David Adelman told reporters in Minnesota. “That is not who we have been throughout the season.”

Nikola Jokic went 1-for-7 in the first quarter, remaining knee-deep in a 3-point shooting slump since the All-Star break (29.7% compared to 42 % in the season’s first half).

“This guy has played a million playoff games. There are nights that are poor,” Adelman said. “He will bounce back.”

Jamal Murray had no rhythm, forced to create off the dribble through sticky defenders, most notably McDaniels. It was left for Zeke Nnaji — yes, you read that correctly — to provide a brief spark.

There is struggling. And there is dissolving.

The Timberwolves ballooned their lead to 52-30 with 4:21 remaining in the half with a bucket by — who else? — McDaniels. He nearly outscored Jokic and Murray over the first 24 minutes, dropping 13 points.

“I talked with him a little bit (before the game),” Finch said. “Now you gotta back it up.”

His play cashed the check his mouth wrote. McDaniels delivered 20 points, converting 9 of 13 shots, and added 10 rebounds.

Given a chance to deliver a hard foul on him early in the game, the Nuggets chose the velvet glove. McDaniels did what he wanted without consequence, saying afterward that he was merely playing team ball in pursuit of a win.

His teammates knew better.

“He is our brother,” said Timberwolves guard Ayo Dosunmu in an on-court TV interview. “We had his back.”

This is what they call getting your nose rubbed in it on the playground. Just when it looked like things could not get worse, Bones Hyland, who quit on the Nuggets before getting traded three years ago, put Spencer Jones in a blender and sank a 3-pointer from St. Paul.

That made it 80-56 late in the third.

The first three games have brought a revelation. It is clear the Timberwolves were bored by the regular season. They have lost in the Western Conference Finals the past two years, and apparently needed the higher stakes to become engaged.

In the Nuggets, they found a willing victim, a team that foolishly tries to convince itself that it can flip the switch defensively in the playoffs. Miss me with the rating over the first two games in this series.

Trust your eyes. The Nuggets give up too many blow-bys, too many uncontested shots, and the next time a Denver player takes a charge, it will be from a credit card.

The fourth quarter provided a snapshot of what separates these two teams. Down 20, Murray brought the ball over halfcourt, looking for space. McDaniels guarded him tighter than SaranWrap for 15 seconds, forcing an off-balance 3-pointer.

Typically, Jokic is the default answer when the fire alarm blares. Post him up, and let him go to work. He has toasted Rudy Gobert for years. Perhaps peeved by the lack of respect for his defense, Gobert has flipped the script.

In the first half, Jokic was minus-22 when the gangly center was on the court, continuing an alarming trend in the series.

Jokic has been unable to deliver easy buckets near the rim or get Gobert into foul trouble. The Timberwolves willingly left Jokic open behind the arc. And Jokic could not make it hurt. He is 4 for 25 on 3s in the series.

Jokic finished with 27 points on 26 shots. Murray went 5-for-17, and for the second time in the series, failed to make a 3.

For those who want to provide cover for the Nuggets because of Gordon’s late scratch, just understand it comes off as an excuse. Even with Gordon, the Nuggets lost Game 2 because the Timberwolves did everything they couldn’t — like win in the paint and on the boards.

The Nuggets find themselves in this hole because the Timberwolves have made life miserable for Jokic and Murray. They are winning in the margins. They are physical, intentional.

Go ahead, tell yourself the Nuggets are better.

But one thing is clear through three games. They are definitely not tougher.

Minnesota shook. And the Nuggets looked shaken. They were a no-show for most of Game 3 of their first-round playoff series Thursday, never leading in a 113-96 loss to the Timberwolves. It was only the third time this season that Denver has failed to score 100 points. The other two were without Nikola Jokic.

“It’s tough. Nobody on the team was making shots, including myself,” Jamal Murray said. “… They played with a lot of adrenaline. The crowd was into it in the first quarter, and I feel like we were just playing a little too fast. And after that quarter, the score was pretty even quarter to quarter. But that first really hurt us. Couldn’t recover from that. So we’ve just gotta be better to start the game and have a calmer mindset, especially on the road.”

Starting power forward Aaron Gordon was sidelined by left calf tightness, but his presence might not have mattered. Jokic and Jamal Murray never established any sort of scoring rhythm in the rout. They combined to shoot 12 for 43, scoring 43 points between them, and it took until the second half for a third Nuggets starter to make a shot from the field.

Jokic missed his first six shots. The team missed 16 of its first 18. The Timberwolves foamed at the mouth, eager to back up Jaden McDaniels’ trash talk about Denver’s defense from three days earlier. The Nuggets didn’t appear bothered enough by it. They allowed 40 points in the paint before halftime. They had scored 39 points total at half — in and outside of the paint.

“We just had a hard time making shots tonight,” coach David Adelman said. “… Our two best players, from the field, obviously really struggled.”

Adelman turned shades of Michael Malone late in the half, seething as he called a timeout after Denver failed to get back on defense off of a made shot. He burned through three of his timeouts in a four-minute stretch of the second quarter, as the Nuggets’ defense abandoned them.

It had saved them from getting run out of the gym early — they trailed 25-11 after the opening stanza — but Minnesota’s relentless downhill driving was too much of a problem. Especially with Gordon and Peyton Watson out.

“Guys were trying to get back to their matchups as opposed to: Just match up,” Adelman said. “They’re gonna play faster in this building than they do on the road. All teams do. And it was unfortunate because I thought the group to start the second quarter really competed. … But every time we would make a run, we’d give up a runaway layup after a make or a miss. You can’t do that in a playoff game. So we’ll definitely watch the film. That has to get better.”

Ayo Dosunmu, one of the most impactful trade deadline acquisitions in the NBA this year, led the Wolves with 25 points and nine assists off the bench. He exposed Denver’s transition defense, forced the Nuggets to collapse with his straight-line speed and finished a flawless 10-for-12 inside the arc. McDaniels exposed the Nuggets on the glass, crashing for four offensive rebounds en route to a 20-point double-double. Rudy Gobert continued to be the most valuable player of the series, keeping Jokic uncomfortable at all times.

He and McDaniels — the two best defenders on either team in this series — have outplayed Denver’s two best offensive players through three contests. That’s been enough for Minnesota to seize a 2-1 lead after trailing by 19 points early in Game 2.

And it was enough on Thursday to compensate for a choppy game from Anthony Edwards, who developed a limp in the fourth quarter after spending most of his evening in foul trouble. He finished with 17 points, five boards and three assists.

The Wolves left the door open for a second-half comeback when Edwards and Julius Randle were both off the court. But Denver failed to cut substantially into a 27-point deficit. It was still 20 after the third quarter. Going to a zone defense slowed Minnesota down further in the fourth, but the Nuggets weren’t generating the shots they’re used to getting automatically.

Christian Braun finished the game with two points and no field goals. Cam Johnson scored six on as many shots.

“I think to get those guys going, they have to screen better,” Adelman said. “If you can free up your best players, that’s gonna bring rotations. That’s gonna bring a low man.”

Julian Strawther entered the rotation as Adelman searched for offensive punch, but he missed five of his six attempts from the field.

Zeke Nnaji slid in as a backup center and provided good energy. The Nuggets won his 16 minutes by two. Nobody else finished in the black. Spencer Jones replaced Gordon in the starting lineup and limited Randle, though he added very little offensively. The Nuggets are unsure what Gordon’s status will be for Game 4, which tips off Saturday at 6:30 p.m. MT at Target Center.

“Older,” the versatile power forward said late Monday night.

“I’ve got some recovery to do.”

By opening tip of the next game, the Nuggets were in a code-red situation. It was always liable to happen at some point during this playoff run. But Game 3 of the first round was far sooner than they anticipated.

Gordon appeared on Denver’s injury report Thursday morning — probable with left calf tightness. Then he was downgraded to questionable in the afternoon. Then he was ruled out, Nuggets coach David Adelman said Thursday night.

As Gordon had indicated himself, he started feeling tight Monday after Game 2.

“We were waiting to see how he was gonna react to it,” Adelman told reporters before Game 3 at Target Center. “You don’t practice hard in between these games, so it was more of a walk-through prep kind of situation, which he was a part of. And today, there wasn’t much improvement. … I can’t tell the future, so I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring.”

Gordon, 30, was in and out of the lineup this season because of a recurring right hamstring strain. His left calf tightness first popped up on March 29, when he woke up feeling discomfort and reported it to the team. He sat out that night against the Warriors, a decision made out of precaution, then returned for the next game.

Adelman didn’t rule out the possibility of Gordon returning for Game 4 on Saturday, but he stressed that he wasn’t sure how Gordon would respond to treatment between games.

“It just seems like this has happened so many times,” the first-year coach said.

In the meantime, 24-year-old wing Spencer Jones was tapped to start Game 3 in Gordon’s place, guarding Minnesota’s Julius Randle. Jones began the season on a two-way contract but was converted to a standard NBA deal at the minimum prorated salary in February, enabling him to appear in playoff games. Undrafted out of Stanford in 2024, he spent most of his rookie season with the Nuggets’ G League affiliate. He started 37 games this year with Gordon often unable to play.

“Those experiences, whether they’re positive or negative, are so valuable. … These are all learning lessons for a young guy that hasn’t played in those moments but has the ability to be in those moments,” Adelman said. “So I trust Spence. It’s been a growing process for him throughout the season. … He’s had a lot of opportunities like this this season where he wakes up one morning and has no idea he’s gonna play, and all of a sudden he starts and plays 35 minutes.”

Last season, Gordon missed 31 games and came off the bench in nine others because of a right calf strain. He played through that injury during the playoffs, scoring two game-winners for Denver. The whole time, he was “taking a chance every time he explodes and jumps,” Adelman said last May. Gordon ended up suffering a left hamstring strain in Game 6 of Denver’s second-round series against Oklahoma City. He tried to play through that as well in Game 7, contributing eight points and 11 rebounds in a season-ending loss.

Sidelined mostly by the right hamstring this year, he appeared in only 36 regular-season games, averaging 16.2 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.7 assists. He amassed eight points, seven boards and four assists in Denver’s Game 2 loss to the Timberwolves on Monday, logging 37 minutes.

“I’m doing everything that I possibly can,” he said afterward. “Now it’s about just moving slower.”

But as coach David Adelman points out, the timing of Jaden McDaniels’ viral insult was a little ironic.

McDaniels was not afraid to stir the pot Monday night after the Timberwolves stole Game 2 of their first-round playoff series from the Nuggets. Minnesota’s 25-year-old wing called out Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and several other players by name for being easy marks. “They’re all bad defenders,” he declared.

Indeed, Denver’s defense ranked 21st in the regular season at 116, a bottom-10 finish for the second consecutive year. But Minnesota has failed to consistently take advantage of it through two games, despite McDaniels’ smack talk.

“We’ve gotten really lazy as a society. What����ap our defensive rating in this series?” Adelman asked reporters Wednesday after the Nuggets finished practice.

It����ap 109 points allowed per 100 possessions — 102 in 67 minutes when Jokic and Murray have shared the court.

“OK,” Adelman said. “Next.”

Denver’s defense became a national talking point after the attention-grabbing quote from McDaniels. It was convenient talk show fodder. And it wasn’t completely without merit: Jokic and Murray generally have a reputation for being subpar defenders at their respective positions — Jokic as a big man who doesn’t protect the rim, Murray as a guard who struggles to stop the ball. The majority of their effort is devoted to offense, where they’re one of the savviest and most talented duos in the NBA. Opponents try to force them, in turn, to defend pick-and-rolls and other actions.

“All teams do this in the playoffs,” as Adelman said himself between the first two games of the series. “You’re either hunting a matchup, or you’re trying to get the other team’s best offensive players as tired as possible.”

But the Nuggets didn’t lose Game 2 at home because of their defense. In large part, they lost Game 2 because Jokic and Murray weren’t good enough … offensively.

Sounds backwards, doesn’t it?

“I think that defensively, we’ve been pretty good,” Christian Braun said. “There were some spots where we could’ve played better. We made some mistakes, I think late (in the) game, that we don’t typically make. But we’re not too worried about comments, what other people are saying.”

“I can’t wait for his podcast,” Adelman added when reacting to McDaniels’ take.

Two portions of the game stand out upon review. The first is a stretch of the second quarter, when the Wolves were erasing a 19-point deficit. Their comeback started with an 11-0 run when Jokic was on the bench, taking his usual breather, but Denver still wielded a 10-point lead with 7:30 to go in the half.

Jokic had checked back in. Rudy Gobert, who played outstanding 1-on-1 defense against him, was out of the game with three fouls, not be seen again until the second half. Minnesota was playing a smaller, five-out lineup with Julius Randle and Naz Reid in frontcourt. That unit did inherently cause problems for the Nuggets’ defense by stretching them out. It enabled Anthony Edwards and the Wolves to more comfortably put pressure on the rim, move the ball around the perimeter and knock down open 3s.

But it also sacrificed defensive stability against Jokic. Or it should have, at least.

The Nuggets neglected to use their biggest advantage. On four consecutive empty possessions, Jokic never touched the ball in the frontcourt. Denver played fast-paced offense instead, rushing into shots without settling down and involving him. On a fifth possession, Jokic finally got an awkward touch around the elbow but had to tip the ball to himself multiple times while Minnesota went for a steal. He ended up passing out of the chaos. Aaron Gordon missed a corner three. Make it five straight possessions without a paint touch for the MVP center.

By the end of those five possessions, Minnesota had transformed a double-digit deficit into a lead. Jokic got a paint touch on the next trip and scored easily. He posted up Randle the possession after that, waited for a second defender to collapse then kicked out to Murray for an open 3-pointer. When the Nuggets ended the half on an 8-0 run, it started with Jokic establishing position deep in the paint for a catch and an easy bucket.

But in total, he only attempted four shots — one of them from deep — in his 8.5 second-quarter minutes against a lineup that couldn’t guard him. That much was obvious in the second half, when Gobert was sidelined by foul trouble again. Denver adjusted by slowing down and feeding Jokic more. He was a more willing aggressor. He scored 12 easy points during a 14-5 run, as if to accentuate the missed opportunities from that earlier stint.

Then came the fourth-quarter drought. Game 2 ended on a 19-9 Timberwolves run, the crux of which happened from the 8:20 to 1:20 mark. In those seven minutes, Denver’s only made field goal was a transition dunk by Braun when Randle fell asleep getting back on defense after a free throw.

Jokic and Murray combined to miss 10 consecutive shots. They spammed the two-man game against Minnesota’s two best defenders, McDaniels and Gobert. Jokic screened for Murray. Murray screened for Jokic, inverting the pick-and-roll — a trick that very few tandems have the skill-set to pull off. By using Jokic as the ball-handler, Denver can make an elite defensive center like Gobert guard in a way he’s not accustomed to — fighting over screens. The coverage decisions can become trickier for a defense.

But Jokic was sloppy. Not as precise as usual. On one inverted pick-and-roll with Bruce Brown as the screener, Donte DiVincenzo (Brown’s defender) stepped up to show, before Jokic had dribbled around the screen. Brown read the defense and slipped toward the rim instead of holding his screen — the right play. He was open. But Jokic had the ball poked away by DiVincenzo before he could make the pass, forcing him to reset. The possession ended with Jokic cutting to receive a pass from Brown, then missing a contested layup with Gobert in pursuit.

On another possession, McDaniels navigated an initial screen from Jokic successfully to stay glued to Murray. The point guard gave the ball to Jokic and screened for him, flowing into the second action. Jokic rejected the screen and leveraged it to create an open driving lane to his left. But Gobert again stuck to his hip just well enough to make Jokic’s lefty layup attempt difficult. Jokic missed it and fell on the baseline in the process, perhaps trying to sell a foul. It led to a 5-on-4  transition push for Minnesota. An easy dunk.

Other times, the Nuggets generated open 3s but simply missed. They ran an after-timeout play in which Murray dribbled to his left around two screens and got free of McDaniels, only to clank the shot from one of his favorite spots on the floor. Jokic came off a pin-down from Braun to catch on the right wing — again making Gobert chase him around a screen — but air-balled the 3-pointer.

And Gobert was up to the task of guarding Jokic in isolation when the Nuggets decided to clear out on a handful of clutch possessions. Jokic moved the French giant into the paint on one, but he front-rimmed a hook shot that he usually makes, leading to an awkward, ricocheting long rebound and a fast-break dunk the other way.

In those seven minutes, the Timberwolves outscored Denver 12-3. Four of those points were in transition — directly resulting from Jokic’s missed shots. Another two points were scored by Gobert when he bullied Jokic out of the way for an offensive rebound. Aside from those three dunks, the Wolves shot 2-for-10 during their own run to take over the game by four.

The Nuggets got enough stops to win. Their set defense didn’t fail them. Their offensive execution, shot-making and rebounding did.

The loss was punctuated by two uncharacteristically bad decisions on offense — one by Jokic with the ball in his hands, the other by Murray with the ball in his.

So naturally, their defense became the center of attention afterward.

“This is just a part of the rivalry,” Braun said. “I think that’s just part of what comes with it. I don’t think (the comments) caught anybody off-guard. He’s kind of speaking his truth and what he believes. We’ll allow them to do that. We kind of want to take care of our own things. … You shouldn’t need a fire lit under you in the playoffs.”

Indifference was the Nuggets’ overarching tone as they prepared for Game 3 on Thursday (7:30 p.m. MT) in Minneapolis. Even so, it was clear enough that McDaniels’ quote had been posted on a bulletin board somewhere in Ball Arena.

“They’ve just been saying a lot. All season. All series,” said Cam Johnson, who was one of the players named by McDaniels. “So let them talk. Let them get everything they want off their chest. We’re cool with it.”

The Nuggets collapsed against the Timberwolves. Again. They squandered a 19-point second quarter lead. It represented their biggest playoff meltdown since Minnesota erased a 20-point advantage two years ago.

The Timberwolves are the definition of annoying. Coach Chris Finch turns officiating into the Lincoln-Douglas debates. And their players relish talking smack.

Monday night, however, the team that cried wolf left the Nuggets with a bloody lip and crooked nose.

The postgame scene eloquently explained why this series has become greasy, if not spicy.

Aaron Gordon sat at his locker twirling the tape from his finger, unable to wrap his head around a stunning 119-114 defeat.

Christian Braun frowned into space, upset over missing a free throw with 19.1 seconds left.

And Jamal Murray looked spent, trying to make sense of how the Nuggets raced out to a 44-25 cushion and dissolved when it mattered most.

Down the hall, the Timberwolves popped off like they found the cheat code for Nikola Jokic. They blabbered about the Nuggets in a way more suited for a prize fight than a first-round NBA playoff series.

Just listen to how Jaden McDaniels described their offensive awakening over the final three quarters.

“Go after Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders. Tim Hardaway, Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, the whole team, just go at them,” said McDaniels on the key to Minnesota’s attack. “Yeah, they’re all bad defenders.”

OK, this just got good. No more pretense. Or political correctness. This rivalry — the teams are 15-15 over their last 30 games — is on full volume and out in the open for everyone to see.

If the Nuggets don’t respond with vigor to McDaniels’ evisceration, they don’t deserve to play for a championship, let alone win one.

Given a chance to step on Minnesota’s throat, the Nuggets choked. Simple as that. Their bodies were too tired. The shots too short. Typically after a Denver-Minnesota postseason game, talk centers on a center. It did again.

Just not the one we expected.

Instead of dissecting another unicorn performance from Jokic, the discussion focused on how Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert won the one-on-one matchup.

Jokic scored two points in the fourth quarter, unable to solve Gobert’s range and length. It was a running theme.

Gobert held the three-time MVP to 1-for-8 shooting and four points over 20-plus minutes when he was on the floor. Jokic scored 20 points against everyone else, including wearing out Naz Reid for 12 in the third quarter, a strategy he should have employed sooner.

“(Gobert) is a really good defensive player. He makes you make tough shots. He’s big, has reach,” Jokic said. “He can take away any kind of angle or position.”

Gobert also had motivation. He has not defended Jokic well in the playoffs, but Game 2 offered a chance to make critics swallow their tongues.

As Anthony Edwards explained, “Everybody’s gonna say this and that about Rudy. People don’t understand what he means to us. They don’t want to lay the ball up around him. They don’t want to go at him.”

Before the game, the NBA announced Spurs star Victor Wembanyama as the Defensive Player of the Year. No surprise.

Gobert failing to finish in the top three in the voting, behind Chet Holmgren and Ausur Thompson, did not sit well with Finch.

“It’s a joke,” Finch said. “I thought it was incredibly disrespectful. It’s just laughable.”

Gobert tried to deflect the voting as a reason for Monday’s effort. He scored two points and had five fouls, but rarely has a box score been so misleading.

Gobert made everything hard. He turned every trip into the paint into an episode of “Naked and Afraid,” uncomfortable, awkward and desperate.

When the Nuggets broke out in the first quarter, they should have finished on cruise control. Instead, they ran into a 7-foot-1-inch high retaining wall on the back stretch.

They got Gobert-ed.

“I know who I am. It’s not the first time I have been disrespected. Probably not the last. I just have to be myself,” Gobert said of the awards voting. “If they want to disrespect greatness and take it for granted, sooner or later they will realize the impact.”

During clutch time over multiple possessions, Jokic was thwarted. The last two minutes were capsulized by Jokic eschewing a floater for a pass to Braun. What should have been a bucket turned into a single free throw.

“I was lucky. I am not a top 3 defender so I shouldn’t be able to do that,” Gobert quipped.

The easy narrative told through blue and yellow-tinted glasses is that the Nuggets missed shots they normally make. Especially late. There are not many examples where Jokic and Murray clank 10 of 12 shots in the fourth.

But this stumble felt more personal, more damning.

The Nuggets bench was shallow, too dependent on Tim Hardaway Jr. and Bruce Brown. Jonas Valanciunas provided nothing. And Spencer Jones is a functional piece, but not someone capable of shifting momentum as Denver was torched in non-Jokic minutes, including an 11-0 second quarter run.

The truth is the Nuggets got cute, became intoxicated by their rocket launch. Every shot became an opportunity to get into transition. The problem is they stopped rebounding. They were outscored 20-3 on second chance points.

In January on a back-to-back, that is an effort statistic. Monday, it was the wrong mindset.

“We have to change ours,” coach David Adelman said.

The Nuggets lost because they were slow to adapt defensively in the second quarter. They wilted because they could not get anyone hot over the final 10 minutes when Jokic and Murray lost their aim.

These Nuggets are still good enough to dismiss the Timberwolves. But Monday, they folded.

They did not just get beat. They got punked.

How they respond Thursday will tell us everything we need to know about their toughness.

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.”

They’re going to Minneapolis in a tied first-round playoff series, 1-1, after blowing a 19-point lead Monday night and dropping Game 2 at home to the Timberwolves, 119-114.

“You get too high,” Tim Hardaway Jr. said, “and you get, I don’t want to say cocky, but feeling yourself.”

Denver’s missed opportunities loomed nightmarish over a 6-0 Timberwolves run that flipped the game in the last five minutes. Nikola Jokic missed short on a contested layup over Rudy Gobert that’s usually automatic for him, the long rebound leading directly into a Minnesota fast break. David Adelman used a timeout to reset and draw up a play, down 110-107. It resulted in an open 3-point attempt for Murray, who missed on an otherwise stellar 6-for-14 night from deep.

The Timberwolves locked up Denver’s patented two-man game. Gobert bullied Jokic out of the way for a put-back dunk to double the lead with two minutes left, highlighting Minnesota’s 20-3 dominance of second-chance points.

Aaron Gordon cashed a triple to cut it to one, but Donte DiVincenzo got free for an answer. It gave Minnesota a 115-111 edge with 1:05 to play. Jokic threw down a dunk over Gobert at the other end to keep the Nuggets within range.

But at the end of a wobbly performance from Jokic, he made a surprising decision that will linger as the biggest what-if of the series so far. With a chance to bury a game-tying floater in the pick-and-roll, he instead passed out of his form at the last second to Christian Braun, who was grounded in the dunker spot, not soaring for an alley-oop. He nonetheless drew a foul. A trip to the line. A chance, maybe, to force overtime.

Not quite. The Timberwolves missed 11 free throws on the night, but Braun’s miss with 19 seconds left just about sealed Denver’s fate. Down three on the next possession, Murray settled for an ill-advised midrange jumper, and the Wolves escaped with a split on the road. They’ve won four of their last six playoff games at Ball Arena.

My NBA awards ballot: MVP, All-NBA, Rookie of the Year votes | Durando

It snapped a 13-game win streak for the Nuggets. They're now 1-5 in their last six Game 2s, dating back to the 2023 NBA Finals.

Anthony Edwards amassed 30 points and 10 rebounds on a shaky knee. Murray matched him in scoring. Jokic finished with 24 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists. He shot 8 for 20.

The first half alone belongs in the annals of instant classics between the Nuggets and Wolves. It packed in all the emotional swings that have characterized the best games between these star-crossed rivals. It included a sequence in which Denver converted three different 4-point plays in a span of four possessions. That wasn't even the weirdest thing that happened. It was late in the first quarter, as the Nuggets were piling on against an underdog that appeared physically limited and emotionally distant.

Edwards was limping around, voluntarily not involving himself in some of Minnesota's possessions. The Wolves were stagnant. The Nuggets were inspired. Hardaway powered Ball Arena's electricity for the next month with a double-dip of effort plays, diving two rows into the stands to save a loose ball on Denver's baseline, climbing out as the Nuggets turned it over, then gathering himself just in time to take a charge against Minnesota's ensuing 3-on-1.

Then the Timberwolves got frisky. Down 44-35 early in the second quarter, they started whittling away while Gobert and Jonas Valanciunas traded fouls. Gobert picked up three in as many minutes. Valanciunas got tagged with two and a technical. Minnesota was on an 11-0 run by the time Adelman used a timeout to get Jokic back on the floor ahead of schedule. Not even that helped. With Gobert sentenced to the bench, Chris Finch had to go smaller with Randle at the five. Jokic wasn't aggressive enough against those lineups until the second half, and the Wolves suddenly couldn't miss a shot.

They took the lead five minutes after trailing by 19. Overall, they engineered a 27-point swing in 10 minutes. Edwards suddenly had 20 points and a spring in his step.

Then the Nuggets struck back, scoring the last eight of the half. It ended in deja vu. Murray splashed a game-tying 51-footer at the buzzer, his league-leading fourth bucket of the season from behind halfcourt. In Game 4 between the Nuggets and Wolves, the first half finished identically -- with an 8-0 run and a heave from Murray. Denver went on to win the game. Not the series. This time, Game 2 went into intermission deadlocked and the slate was wiped clean, as the basketball gods intended.

Denver attempted 33 free throws in a 116-105 series-opening win, led by Murray’s 16-for-16 game. Minnesota attempted 19 free throws as a team.

Finch, a former Nuggets assistant coach, was miffed during his postgame press conference. When asked again for his perspective on the disparity with the benefit of hindsight, he took aim at not only the referees but the Nuggets for the taboo act of intentionally trying to draw fouls.

“One guy shot 16 free throws. What do you want me to say? They weren’t all fouls. Some of them were fouls,” Finch said Monday night. “The league is in a place right now where you draw the contact (and) when you spill away, you get rewarded. Guys who try to play through contact, that first level of contact, and stay with the drive and all that, they tend not to be rewarded. Fouls are rewarded up the floor. They’re not rewarded in and around the paint. … It’s really hard to defend sometimes, and especially now, guys have figured out if they just lower the shoulder on you and move you out of the way, you get all the advantage. So, not sure how to answer that to our guys sometimes when they get frustrated. But we’ve gotta do a better job.”

Finch was almost done with his answer. Almost. But he had one more comment to add.

“And maybe we’ve gotta start flopping, too,” he finished.

Nuggets coach David Adelman defended Murray during his pregame comments.

“I mean, there was a flagrant foul; he shot three free throws. There was a technical foul; he shot a free throw. So it was 12,” Adelman said. “And he got fouled. So it’s the playoffs. Everybody politicks after games, but let’s at least list out the 16 free throws and what actually happened. This isn’t one of those games where he’s just walking to the line. It was playing through a lot of physicality. Multiple guys getting into him. It’s what they do. They toe the line. And the fouls early allowed them to argue the point that the fouls were 4-0 to start, and then you start seeing a reaction (from the officials).

“So that stuff happens in these games; they’re so physical. It could happen the other way tonight. It’s just the way it is. But from what I saw, flagrants and technicals are not part of the flow of the game, in my opinion. But we’ll move on.”

The flagrant referenced by Adelman was a close-out by Jaden McDaniels into the landing space of Murray on a 3-point attempt, which is technically part of the flow of the game. But it was verified as a foul by the officials via replay review — they initially called it a common foul then upgraded it to a flagrant.

In addition to those three, Murray shot one free throw after a technical foul that was called on McDaniels for shoving Nikola Jokic in the back. Then in the fourth quarter, Julius Randle committed an away-from-the-play foul for trying to grapple with Aaron Gordon before an inbound pass, resulting in another Murray free throw unrelated to his activity.

“I do think sometimes when you watch film, you just say, ‘Yeah, that guy got fouled,'” Adelman said. “There’s nights, believe me, when we play Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) or somebody who shoots a lot of free throws, I don’t go back to the clips and say, ‘I can’t believe you got all those calls.’ I go, ‘Why are we fouling him so much?’”

Aside from Murray, the leaders in individual free throw attempts for Game 1 were Denver’s Aaron Gordon (eight), Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards (seven), Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert (five) and Minnesota’s McDaniels (four). Jokic went to the foul line only once; Randle went only twice for the Wolves.

“Julius is not a flopper. Ant’s not a flopper. Those guys are physical drivers,” Finch said. “They play through the first line of contact a lot. And a lot of times, that point of contact, if you were to spill away, he gets a foul. But if he keeps going, then they take a ‘play on’ mentality. The level of contact and the legality of the guarding position is exactly the same.”

“I’m tired of waiting,” the Nuggets guard shared with nobody in particular on his way into the locker room. “It’s (expletive) playoff time, mother-(expletives).”

It might as well have been a thesis statement for his entire team’s headspace. The Nuggets live a charmed life, boasting the longest active streak of NBA playoff appearances in the Western Conference, and it can cause the dog days of the regular season to feel burdensome. Their annual struggle is to resist auto-pilot — especially at the end of the floor that requires more effort. Combine their human instinct and an unusually contagious injury bug this season, and the result was a bottom-10 defense in the NBA for the second consecutive year.

It didn’t show in Game 1 against the Timberwolves.

In what felt like an upside down start to the playoffs, the best 3-point shooting team in the league overcame a 1-for-17 second half with disciplined guarding. Braun took the lead on Edwards, and Denver held an opponent to 105 points or fewer for just the 15th time this year.

“Which is something we’ve been crying about the whole season,” Spencer Jones said, laughing. “So to be able to do it first game of the playoffs shows the intensity we can play at, and play at it consistently.”

The Nuggets shot 43.7% from the field and 27.8% from deep, their second-lowest clip of the year in a win. They were 15-22 in the regular season when they shot any worse than 49% overall, a sign of the strain they put on their historic offense nightly.

Defensive stops were manufactured up and down the lineup. Bruce Brown was Denver’s amplifier, compiling five steals off the bench in his first playoff game as a Nugget since the 2023 championship clincher. “Some guys might get mad at me, but I think he’s our most effective on-ball defender,” Jamal Murray said. “When he comes in, he’s up underneath guys. He’s not even fouling. And if he does foul, it’s stopping them from getting two points.”

Nuggets coach David Adelman praised him for “toeing the line that you need to toe in the playoffs.”

Aaron Gordon was predictably formidable as the primary matchup on Julius Randle, who never established a groove while scoring an inefficient 16 points. The Nuggets allowed less than a point per possession in 29 minutes with Gordon on the floor.

When he got in early foul trouble, Jones and Cam Johnson helped weather the storm against Minnesota’s offensive-minded fours, Randle and Naz Reid. Johnson displayed his understated versatility as an isolation defender throughout the series opener, forcing Randle and Edwards into tough shots despite mainly taking the Jaden McDaniels assignment. “Trying to bother the handle a little bit,” Johnson said. “Don’t let them get super rhythmic with it, because that’s when guys get comfy and hit shots.”

Nikola Jokic played his vintage up-to-touch ball screen coverage, giving Braun time to recover to Edwards when Minnesota wanted to put Jokic in the action (which was often). His defensive effort has been justifiably scrutinized at times this season, but the context is crucial. Denver’s new coaching regime — Adelman as the head man, Jared Dudley as his defensive coordinator — prefers to play the long game.

Their philosophy from the start was to devise a scheme that could help save Jokic’s legs for playoff basketball. They wanted him hanging out around the paint more during the regular season, despite his shortcomings as a rim protector. They didn’t want him to overexert himself with too much aggressive pick-and-roll defense, like he has typically played over the years to capitalize on his quick hands and high IQ. They’ve put him in a drop more often, or at the bottom of a zone, or they’ve they sought out cross-matches against non-shooters. “I don’t want him having him to go guard these guards on the wings, in rotations,” Dudley told The Post early in the season.

It was all in anticipation of this. Physical and mental fatigue played a factor in Denver’s last two season-ending losses, both second-round Game 7s. The sense around the team this year is that Jokic feels fresh. Adelman stumped for him after Game 1, pointing out unprompted that Jokic “was up (the floor) in pick-and-roll, like, 65 times. I know he gets killed defensively. But man, he’s in good shape.”

And at the center of this “grimy” series-opening win was Braun, who shouldered the Ant matchup that he’s grown all too familiar with in recent years. Edwards led the Timberwolves in scoring (22), but he looked nothing like his usual self in a labored 7-for-19 performance. Part of that may have been due to lingering runner’s knee; he had an opportunity to attack Murray in space on a late fourth-quarter possession, but as the Nuggets loaded up with help behind Murray, Edwards settled for a deep 3-point attempt instead of driving and kicking to an open teammate.

Part of it was Braun, who has the liberty to switch strategies on his own from possession to possession, Adelman said. The fourth-year guard, who turned 25 the day before the playoffs, has been growing more comfortable playing on his left ankle in the second half of the season. It still gets swollen and requires extra postgame treatment, residual effects of the ligament damage caused by a severe sprain last November.

“I thought CB was great,” Adelman said. “He’s guarding one of the best players in the world. … With Ant, you have to have somebody guarding him that will change up their own coverages sometimes. Take responsibility to not give him the same look every time. … You can trust CB that what he’s doing, there’s a reason for it. I realized this last year in the playoffs, when he really had an enormous role guarding the better players with (James) Harden then on to Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander). You can trust him. Not all players are like that.”

Braun emerged as one of the Nuggets’ best Ant defenders during the 2024 playoffs, when Kentavious Caldwell-Pope struggled in the matchup. He left Denver in free agency that offseason, leaving a job opening in the starting lineup. Braun seized it, becoming the team’s lead defensive guard. He’s taken on most of the NBA’s premiere ball-handlers over the last two years, experiencing ups and downs as an over-screen defender in pick-and-roll. But he has grown accustomed to the mental resilience it takes to guard superstars in a league where good offense tends to trump good defense. He’s startlingly honest when he feels an opponent “kicked my (butt),” as Harden did in Game 1 of the playoffs last season.

“It was probably his best game of the series,” Braun recalled Saturday. “Then I kind of learned and I adjusted. I think in Game 7, obviously we took care of business and did a really good job on him. I think as the series went on, we kept me on him more and more. … I’m gonna learn what Ant does throughout the series, and it’s a series for a reason.”

Which is all to say, Braun and the Nuggets know they’re in no place to take a victory lap after one game of good defense.

Harden had 32 points and 11 assists in that Game 1. He fizzled out by Game 7, scoring seven points on eight shots.

The opposite trajectory is just as feasible, if Braun allows Edwards to get too comfortable on his knee as this series develops.

“Just be annoying the whole game,” Jokic said.

The entire roster took that edict to heart in Game 1, and the Timberwolves buckled under the pressure. McDaniels shoved Jokic in the back and picked up a dead ball technical foul. Randle failed to hustle back into the play after Denver snatched an offensive rebound on a 45-foot heave with two minutes left. Gordon punished him for his poor effort by getting wide open for a dunk. Then Randle committed two frustration fouls in an 11-second span as the game spiraled out of control for Minnesota. Wolves coach Chris Finch criticized his team’s lack of composure.

It stemmed from a Denver defense that had been hibernating for months, counting on its ability to suddenly jolt awake in April. It’s a risky blueprint, but it worked in Game 1.

“They tried to bully us a little bit in the front. We knew that was gonna happen. That’s how this team tries to get under our skin,” Jones said. “So for us to match it from beginning to end and never give in, and see them be the ones to kind of complain to the refs more than we were — it shows how focused we were.”

He jitter-bugged Donte DiVincenzo. He drop stepped Ayo Dosunmu. He left Naz Reid in the rearview. Even when he missed shots, he made the Timberwolves miserable.

Instead of talking about winning, they resorted to whining.

“Well, the 16 free throws for (Jamal) Murray is a head scratcher,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said.

Really? That was the takeaway after the Nuggets throttled the Timberwolves over the final three quarters in a 116-105 Game 1 victory at Ball Arena?

Finch is a bright man. So it should come as no surprise that he began playing mind games by working the refs. But shouldn’t his guys just work harder guarding Murray without making contact?

“We played really good defense on him I thought. He initiates the contact, spills away and then he gets rewarded for it,” Finch said. “And (Nikola) Jokic does the same thing.”

Oh, here we go again.

Complaining about postseason whistles is like The Masters: a spring tradition unlike any other.

Word of the quip clearly had filtered into the Nuggets’ locker room before they met the media. Coach David Adelman provided a defense of Murray without being asked.

“He is special. He drew a lot of fouls. Because he got fouled,” Adelman said. “A lot.”

Coaches go to the podium and become the heckler in the bleachers, lobbing shots over foul shots. The motivation, left unsaid, is two-fold. Get into the officials’ ears. And try to get into a player’s head, in this case, Murray.

The chatter did not test Murray’s patience. More like his intelligence.

“I thought I got fouled on every single one of them. I don’t know what everybody is talking about,” Murray said. “They were real fouls.”

And the friction between these teams remains genuine.

There were multiple technicals. Minnesota’s Jaden McDaniels soured a solid performance with a bush league push of Nikola Jokic in the back. Aaron Gordon provided a death glare to multiple Timberwolves in the subsequent scrum, suggesting he was ready to end anyone who took another cheap shot at the Nuggets’ star.

“It was physical,” said Jokic, who had as many turnovers (three) as points with four minutes remaining in the first half and finished with a triple-double. “There were ups and downs, runs. Whenever we play them, it’s always interesting.”

What made the opener fascinating is that it cemented how much Murray has evolved this season.

Nuggets fans have been waiting for this. Last time, the Nuggets faced the Timberwolves in a playoff game in Denver, he threw heating pads onto the court.

Saturday, he was running hot. And still causing trouble when he was not.

In a season that started with a challenge to prove he was an All-Star, Murray continues to make critics and opposing coaches look like they are full of it.

No more Bubble Jamal. Or playoff Murray. No delineation needed. He is just Jamal Murray, a soon-to-be All-NBA player who showed the Timberwolves why in a performance that was oddly beautiful.

“He has a lot of responsibility with a lot of different people guarding him. They are holding onto his jersey. This is a challenge,” Aldeman said. “He is so mentally strong. He fights through it.”

Hold your nose, Nuggets fans. JM became SGA. And it was glorious.

All of the grousing about reigning Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander centers on his ability to turn the free-throw line into his own Airbnb.

Saturday, Murray gets a fair whistle and now suddenly he is gaming the system? Come on.

Murray dropped a pair of 50-piece games this season. He attempted five free throws in the first, and six in the last. He plays ethical basketball.

Any other assertion is a misconception. Or desperation (Looking at you coach Finch).

The Timberwolves ran multiple defenders at Murray. They blitzed him when Jokic was in the game. He failed to make a single 3-pointer, missing eight in all. And he finished with 30 because he set a career high in attempts (16) and makes (16) from the charity stripe.

“Irrelevant,” said Murray, when asked if he changes his game based on who is guarding him. “Somebody is chasing me. Somebody’s going to push me. And I get a screen. I score.”

Murray made three throws in the first quarter to keep the Nuggets tethered after a miserable 6-for-22 effort from the field. He converted eight in the second quarter and Denver drew even. And he drained five more after halftime, showing his improvement after failing to ice two games earlier in the season.

“Jamal is amazing. One of the best free-throw shooters in the game,” Jokic said. “When he’s aggressive, going to the rim and the ball is in his hand a lot, we are wholly confident he is going to make those (foul shots).”

He came to life beyond dead-ball moments. When the Nuggets were hanging on without Jokic, Murray sprang loose for a trademark one-handed floater in the third quarter.

And his most important shot, like all his 3s, was a miss. With 1:58 remaining, Murray retrieved a loose ball near half court and heaved a 43-footer as the shot clock expired.

“I was trying to make it,” Murray said.

He did not need it to go in. Just click the rim. As the Timberwolves began transfixed watching the ball, Bruce Brown, who provided a Red Bull jolt in the second quarter on both ends of the floor, grabbed the rebound. He found Murray. And he whipped a one-handed dime to Gordon.

Instead of Minnesota having the ball, down 106-101, the Nuggets led by eight.

That was it. There was no more fight left. The Nuggets won a game that was more paint-by-numbers than Picasso.

It was grimy. Ugly. And it was because of Murray.

Cry wolf somewhere else, coach. Nobody is buying it.