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.”

“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.”

The Nuggets were stunted. Flustered. Worked up.

David Adelman was across midcourt. His protests were only causing more harm. Aaron Gordon was in deep foul trouble. He had just picked up his third of the first quarter, and Adelman had wasted his challenge trying to overturn it. He picked up a technical foul in the process for his indignance. The Timberwolves had brought their 2024 defense to Denver, and they were headed toward a 12-point lead. Nikola Jokic was turning it over. The role players were missing shots.

This all felt reminiscent of that cursed second-round series two years ago, when the Wolves and refs got in the Nuggets’ heads, when Denver lost three of four games at home.

The 2026 Nuggets were ready to take the first punch. They rallied to tie it by halftime, raced ahead in the third quarter, then held on in the fourth for a 116-105 Game 1 win over their rivals Saturday at Ball Arena. They’ve won eight of their last nine playoff Game 1s dating back to their championship run in 2023. Their only series-opening loss in that time was to Minnesota.

“It was the type of playoff game that you love to win because it was kind of ugly,” Adelman said. “… We were up against it right away. And that’s a big thing for a road team to come out, punch the home team in the mouth. That’s what they did after we missed shots. And just the reaction to that, staying together, winning a grimy game, it’s good. We’re gonna have games where we shoot the hell out of it and everything looks pretty, and everybody is gonna say how good we are. There’s no difference. You just win the game. And that’s what the game was tonight.”

Nuggets guard Christian Braun put it more simply after contributing 12 points and eight rebounds.

“When you win and you don’t play well,” he said, “I think that’s a good sign.”

Jamal Murray led the Nuggets with 30 points on a 16-for-16 afternoon at the foul line, shaking off a slow start and a twisted right ankle after Jaden McDaniels closed out into his landing space on an early 3-point attempt. It was his 20th career 30-point playoff game, and he overcame an 0-for-8 outside shooting performance to get there. Jokic added 25 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists. Their two-man game picked apart Minnesota in the third quarter, generating clean scoring chances on nearly every possession.

Most importantly, Denver’s defense came to bat. It bided time for the offense during the first half, while nerves settled and turnovers slowly dissipated. It sank its teeth in during a 14-0 third-quarter run that broke the game open, holding the Wolves scoreless for more than four straight minutes.

“It was physical. It was ups and downs. Runs,” Jokic said. “… It always is about the runs and how you’re gonna react and how you’re gonna manage those runs. Are you gonna take bad shots, or are you gonna create open looks?”

Anthony Edwards, playing on a wobbly knee, led the Wolves with 22 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. Adelman was pleased with Braun’s defense against the star guard, who said he felt fatigued but healthy in the loss. Rudy Gobert added 17 and 10. Julius Randle struggled to assert himself, needing 16 shots to compile 16 points. He and Edwards combined to shoot 14 for 35. Minnesota coach Chris Finch called Murray’s 16 free throws a “head-scratcher” compared to his team’s 19 attempts.

“Ant was trying to snake. Just get a little tap on the ball and make him fumble it so he has to get back in front. The little details helped our defense a lot,” Murray said. “And for us, that leads to offense. So I felt like when we did make those runs, it was because of those little plays.”

The Wolves have been prone to mental lapses this season, and they bit themselves with one at a critical moment in the series opener. Murray was forced to heave a 45-footer at the shot clock buzzer after having the ball poked away with two minutes left — a rare example of a Nuggets possession that didn’t generate an open shot down the stretch. It should’ve been Minnesota’s ball down five. Instead, Murray’s heave grazed the rim, and the Timberwolves ball-watched, giving up an easy offensive rebound to Bruce Brown.

“I’d be mad if I didn’t hit rim,” Murray said.

Gordon capitalized with an open dunk to punctuate his 17-point, eight-rebound game.

“We know what this is. When Aaron plays, we’re a different team,” Adelman said. “It’s just the bottom line. It’s not the stats. It’s the feel. We feel bigger because we are.”

Peyton Watson was the only inactive player on either team. As he continues to recover from a right hamstring strain that he reaggravated on April 1, the growing sense around the team is that he’ll miss at least a couple more games, a source told The Post.

His absence was a troubling sign for the Nuggets’ bench depth and for their defensive options against Edwards. Adelman said earlier this week that he hoped to start the playoffs with “at least nine guys out there (to) see the rotation, how it works,” then to shorten his rotation throughout the series. With Watson ruled out for Game 1, it wasn’t so simple.

“I’ll say I’m gonna play eight and a half going in,” the first-year coach said before tip. “That’s kind of the way you look at it.”

Spencer Jones was the eighth man, making his playoff debut and checking in for the first time since March 29. The 24-year-old was sidelined by a right hamstring injury of his own late in the regular season, interrupting his momentum right after the Nuggets had found success with him as a quasi-backup center.

They had to rely on him and Cam Johnson at the four through most of the first half Saturday after Gordon got in foul trouble. Both were ready for the task defensively. Johnson put in good work against Randle and Edwards in isolation. Offensively, he had Edwards guarding him, so Denver tested Ant’s off-ball defense by calling a steady diet of plays early for Johnson. He scored 10 of his 12 points before halftime. The other two: a game-sealing floater with 53 seconds to go.

As for the ninth man to complete Adelman’s eight and a half? Jonas Valanciunas played the eight minutes Jokic was off the floor, attempting to match Rudy Gobert in size on the glass. Murray and Johnson staggered with the bench unit. The Timberwolves forced Murray to defend pick-and-rolls while Valanciunas was down the floor in coverage, resulting in a couple of pull-up 3s. But otherwise, Minnesota didn’t have enough reliable shot creation when Edwards and Randle were both off the floor. Murray got into a midrange rhythm during the second quarter, and Denver won the first non-Jokic minutes of the playoffs by seven to find new life.

That stint was a minus-five to start the fourth quarter, prompting Adelman to go back to Jokic with nine minutes left and a seven-point lead. Gobert was impressive in 1-on-1 defense against the three-time MVP most of the day, and he forced the Nuggets to respect him offensively by finishing through contact around the rim.

“If he plays like that,” McDaniels said, “we’re going to win (the series).”

But Jokic delivered a decisive sequence with six minutes remaining after Minnesota had cut it to two. Ayo Dosunmu was amping up the pressure. He handed the ball to Murray on the baseline after scoring, ready to pick him up full-court as the Wolves are fond of doing. After the Nuggets got the ball up, Jokic drained a tough floater over Gobert while getting fouled. He disrupted a pass by Randle at the other end, leading to a steal, then tipped in a missed 3-pointer in transition to put Denver back up 102-95.

But Johnson knows himself well. He knows that indulging his curiosity helps him find peace. So he indulged.

Today’s topic was time dilation.

“So gravity, time and speed, they work together,” he explained a few hours later, wiping the sweat from his forehead after the Nuggets finished practice. “So the faster an object goes, the slower time is perceived. To my little extent of knowledge, there’s like a meter. And at the speed of light, at the top of the meter, there’s no space for time in there. Time basically comes to a stop. So a particle of light that����ap traveling at the speed of light, it doesn’t really feel time. If light takes eight minutes to get from the sun to us, that����ap from our perspective. Everything’s about perspective. For that particle of light, it����ap instantaneous because of its speed.”

Johnson was off and running. He referenced the 2014 science fiction movie “Interstellar,” in which Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway age 7 years for every hour that passes on a different planet. He tied it to a more microscopic real-life example — that “an astronaut who worked in the International Space Station for X amount of time might age a couple of milliseconds slower than a human on Earth.” He marveled at the brilliance and imagination of Albert Einstein and other early 20th-century physicists who studied relativity before it was accepted as a theory. “You’re thinking, how did they figure that out?” he said.

The 30-year-old Nuggets wing is a half-decade removed from an NBA Finals run with Phoenix. He hasn’t had a taste of the playoffs since 2023, when his Brooklyn Nets were swept in the first round. As Denver’s starting small forward alongside the star duo of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, he’ll be an X-factor for a team with championship ambitions this year. He’s widely regarded as one of the smartest players in the NBA, an avid student and teacher of the game whose comprehension of the chessboard made him seem like a perfect match for Jokic when Denver traded for him last summer. His mind is one of his greatest strengths — and sometimes his adversary. “I’m probably an overthinker on a lot of things,” he told The Denver Post.

The Nuggets sacrificed a first-round pick and a longtime staple of their starting lineup, Michael Porter Jr., to acquire Johnson in a transaction that also enabled other additions. It was their most significant roster move in four years, a clear signal from Denver’s new front office that change was needed to return to championship form. The old core wasn’t working anymore.

Nine months later, the trade has aged better for the Nuggets in the abstract than it has on the stat sheet. They anticipated that. Porter and Johnson flipped roles. Porter’s expanded. Johnson’s contracted. His season has been a rollercoaster at times, interrupted by injuries and shooting slumps and the overall adjustment process to playing in Jokic’s orbit. His teammates and coaches have implored him to be aggressive, not to scale back too much.

“Cam is a really cerebral player,” coach David Adelman said. “And I think cerebral people sometimes can get in their own way. … It’s my job to make sure he’s getting touches, that he’s part of what we’re trying to accomplish. And it’s his job to just play. Let it happen. He’s too good of a basketball player not to.”

Johnson nonetheless finished the year a career-best 43% from 3-point range, ranking eighth in the league. He’s coming in hot to the playoffs, where Porter struggled in recent years. The coming weeks will provide the real verdict on Denver’s 2025 offseason moves. Johnson is no stranger to the environment and the pressure. He has his own way of navigating it all, of harnessing his tendency to overthink as a recalibration method. A reset button.

When he needs space away from basketball, he puts his mind to work on another subject that brings him as much joy and wonderment. He goes to space.

“I just try to learn things and learn about the world around me,” he said. “When we talk about astronomy and physics in general, as an overthinker, it kind of gets you outside of yourself. You get caught up in your own problems sometimes and the world feels like it����ap this big and everything feels so heavy, and then you go and you learn about some things, and you’re like man, we are really just on a little tiny rock in a very vast abyss.”

Johnson is entranced by physics. By history. By the history of physics. He takes books on the road with him — postgame reading for the tireless hours the Nuggets spend airborne, traveling from NBA city to city.

It has served him well throughout this season and his seven-year NBA career. It will continue to offer him a form of respite during the playoffs, which begin Saturday (1:30 p.m. MT) when Denver hosts the Timberwolves in Game 1.

“My whole world sometimes revolves around what happens in this rectangle,” he said. “So I need the opposite.”

One of the brightest minds in the basketball universe

It doesn’t always show, but Johnson is driven by a competitiveness that matches his intellect. Growing up outside of Pittsburgh, he watched his older brother become a high school valedictorian.

“He always said that he was gonna catch Aaron,” his dad, Gil Johnson, said. That made life simple: Cam got good grades because he had no other choice.

He also applied his smarts to every sport he played. As a quarterback in football, he didn’t need to wear a wrist sleeve with plays listed, Gil said. He had a knack for knowing where his receivers were going, where he needed to place the ball. As a baseball player, he once pitched a strong game for his seventh-grade team, then surprised his dad by explaining exactly how he did it. He didn’t have an elite arsenal of pitches — he was a middle schooler, after all — but he figured out which areas of the strike zone were weaknesses for each hitter throughout the game. “I had no idea that he thought baseball like that,” Gil said.

And as a hooper, Johnson was always trying to identify the next pass his teammates could make, after he passed it to them.

“You saw the leadership. You saw him telling guys where to be,” said Nick Luchini, one of his high school friends and teammates. “You could tell that guys were feeding off how smart he was.”

In a parallel universe, Johnson might’ve been an engineer. He might’ve studied astronomy, or history, or law. But he decided when he was young that he would make it to the NBA. While playing up a couple of years in second grade, he impressed an opponent once and earned a postgame compliment: “You might be a professional basketball player someday.”

Johnson didn’t take it that way.

“He came over with a scowl on his face,” Gil said. Cam was offended by the “might be” part of the comment.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Cam said. “… I feel like a lot of kids think that, you know? And it didn’t always work out for me. You say that to me in ninth grade, I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’ll see.’ Of course, I have confidence in myself, but as a 5-8 freshman, it����ap like, I’m also studying. I’m into books too. … By the time high school got to late junior, early senior years, I unloaded some of my APs intentionally. And kind of spent just a little bit more time in the gym, took a little bit of that (schoolwork) off my plate. So that was probably the first time I made a decision where school was a little bit more on the back burner.”

After all, Cam had already lost the battle to his brother. He would end up a measly salutatorian.

“He got me,” Cam said. “His GPA was higher than mine. He took more APs. He did better on AP tests. He did better on the ACT. He did better on the SAT. I couldn’t catch him. He’s too smart. … He’s just smarter than me, point blank. Period.”

By the time he hit a growth spurt and became a recruiting target for Division I college basketball programs, Johnson was already explaining physics terminology to his high school friends to help them understand a challenging class.

“If I’m being honest, Cam taught me a lot,” his friend Santino Platt said, “dumbing it down for me.”

But Johnson said it wasn’t until a sophomore astronomy course at the University of Pittsburgh that he developed an insatiable curiosity about the mysteries of the universe. And the miracles of scientific discovery within that universe. Amateur astronomy became a hobby as he was drafted into the NBA.

“We have such a mathematical approach to solving so much of what we cannot see,” Johnson said. “It����ap really cool how we use these equations and constants to deduce how far a planet is from a star that����ap 50 light years away, you know what I mean? We can’t see it for nothing. But by measuring how much light it takes away from a star and how big that star is, we can figure out a lot. When you read about the history of it and how long we’ve been around as humans in the past thousands of years, and how rapidly it����ap changing, it makes you think, ‘Well, what do we have wrong now?’ So I just like reading. Reading what people have thought in the past, reading what people think now. We have some really smart scientists in the world, and some are really really good at explaining.”

He came face to face with one of them in 2023, when the Nets helped arrange for him to meet astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. After a long conversation, Johnson and Tyson recorded in which they took turns selecting celestial concepts and events. Johnson’s “team” included the carbonate-silicate cycle, Pluto and a neutron star with the first overall pick. “That����ap a good pick,” he told The Post, doubling down.

He beamed at the display of public interest in NASA’s recent mission to the moon. He wondered to himself if the miracles of science are taken for granted by most people as he watched, in awe of the flight path’s precision. (“We go around the earth, loop to catch the moon, loop the moon, come back to the immediate, right where we want to be, drop them right in the ocean right where we thought they would end up. That����ap what math can do for us. … Not a stationary earth. Not a stationary moon.”)

His favorite reads over the years have included “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson and “The Planet Factory: Exoplanets and the Search for a Second Earth” by Elizabeth J. Tasker. Recently after some Nuggets games, he’s been working his way through “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality” by Brian Greene, which dives into the weeds of theoretical physics.

“It����ap sometimes a little heavy to read after a game,” Johnson said. “Like, you’ve gotta really sit there and think on a couple pages. It����ap not, like, a light read. But that����ap the whole point. Sitting there and thinking. It����ap pretty cool if you ask me.”

He has his other ways of unwinding from basketball, too, of course. He’s an avid golfer. He’s a lifelong sneakerhead, his dad says. And he’s a practicing Christian — but he doesn’t view his religious and scientific convictions as being at odds with each other.

“I think we choose as humans to put them in opposition to each other,” he said. “… If everybody always thought, like, ‘God is in control of everything, I don’t need to worry about it,’ I don’t think we would have as much scientific (discovery). You can look throughout time, and history tells us this. … I really think the two can mesh. And that����ap the perspective I look at it from. I just look at it as creation and the laws of nature are God’s language, and we are slowly trying to uncover it in a way that we can understand. It����ap like translating languages.”

While seeking out texts that make the complex feel digestible, Johnson has simultaneously established himself as a purveyor of intricate concepts. He hosts “The Old Man and the Three,” a prominent basketball podcast that was originally hosted by JJ Redick. Redick left the show when he took over as head coach of the Lakers. Johnson has been his successor, having various Nuggets teammates join him for episodes throughout this season.

The conversation doesn’t usually get around to astronomy. Johnson is wary of boring his friends to death with it — though he has found at least one space friend with the Nuggets in team doctor Steve Short.

“I’ll sit here and explain it, and some of my friends have no interest in it. And they’re nodding their head, nodding their head. I’m rambling. And then — eye-roll,” Johnson said, laughing. “… I’ll get a lot of eye-rolls for sure, like, ‘Here he goes. He don’t even know what he’s talking about.’ … I wonder how many other NBA players think about this stuff.”

Finding his mojo in Denver

Johnson got off to a rocky start in Denver.

He began the season in a nasty slump. A 39% career 3-point shooter, he was 21% after 11 games, good for only 7.2 points per night. Not ideal for a player who had averaged an efficient 18.8 the previous year in Brooklyn.

But the Nuggets were winning. Johnson’s struggles didn’t get in the way of their overall offensive success. Adelman urged patience from fans and media as Johnson navigated his new solar system, one in which Jokic is the sun. The first-year coach defended Johnson again during another rut in early March, after he missed a potential game-winning 3-pointer in Oklahoma City. It weighed heavily on him.

“He puts a lot of pressure on himself — not sometimes, but all the time,” Gil said. “He holds himself up to a high standard.”

But for most of the season, Johnson has been a quietly effective role player, defending better than Porter and keeping defenses honest with his floor-spacing, even when he hasn’t scored. He found his mojo again over the last few weeks, highlighted by a barrage of clutch 3s in a statement win over San Antonio. Johnson rarely celebrates or gets animated on the court, but that day, he shared a cathartic moment with sharpshooting teammate Tim Hardaway Jr. after draining a big shot in overtime. It was the emotional apex of a 12-game win streak to finish the regular season.

Since those first 11 games, Johnson is 46.8% from deep. The Nuggets have a 9.5 net rating with him on the floor.

“We’re all telling him to shoot,” Hardaway said this week. “It would be different if we were telling him to pass, right? So we’re telling him to do what he does best, man. Be that Brooklyn Net Cam that you were out there, averaging 17, 18 a game. Playing freely, playing fun. That����ap what you were brought here to do. Knock down your shots when open and be confident. Don’t be passive.”

The ball will find him in high-stakes situations over the coming weeks. The gravitational pull of the Jokic-Murray two-man game is too intense, like a planet where time is dilated. Defenders will be sucked in from the perimeter. Johnson will get open shots.

When he’s in those moments, nothing else matters to him — no other galaxy or solar system or planet. His universe contracts into an 18-inch cylinder.

“Basketball is a beautiful game,” he said, “in terms of just the creativity and expression of competition. … On the court, I like to just be in that moment and respect it as that.”

Only when the moment is over does the universe expand again, waiting for Johnson’s imagination to explore it. To him, there’s something profound about being able to appreciate the scale of both things: the basket and the abyss.

“It changes my mental state,” he said. “You’re in an environment of high competition and the pressure of competition, where you feel like every shot is so important. I’m shooting a ball into a hole, you know what I mean? It����ap a floating circle, and I’m trying to get a ball into it. I just like to kind of minimize those things when I step off the court, give my mind something else to focus on.”

Nuggets vs. Timberwolves matchups: Who has the edge?

�վ���������ɴDZ������:��115.6 offensive rating (13th), 112.5 defensive rating (8th), 3.1 net (10th).

���ܲ�����ٲ�:��121.2 offensive rating (1st), 116.0 defensive rating (21st), 5.2 net (7th).

Backcourt

Anthony Edwards and Jamal Murray are better players than they were in 2024. They’ve both increasingly embraced the 3-point line to great effect. Murray launched 127 more than his previous career-high this season, shooting 43.5% clip on 7.5 attempts per game. He’ll likely be rewarded with his first All-NBA nod. Edwards is 39.6% on 9.5 attempts per game over the last two years, up from 35.3% on 7.4 in the first four of his career. Nobody on earth craves the ball more than him. He’s the cockiest player in the NBA and arguably one of the five best. Pick-and-roll pull-up 3s have become one of his favorite shots to hunt — especially against teams that struggle with screen navigation like Denver.

How Edwards and Murray are guarded could evolve over the course of the series. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was Denver’s primary perimeter defender in 2024. He’s long gone. Christian Braun has been inconsistent at keeping Edwards in front of him, but he’s likely to start games with the assignment. Aaron Gordon, Bruce Brown, Spencer Jones or Peyton Watson (if he’s healthy) could take shifts. The case for a Minnesota upset starts with the Nuggets being a bad 1-on-1 defensive team. They’ll likely have to send two to Edwards and find creative ways to force the ball out of his hands without compromising their 3-on-4 defense behind the double. Their zone will probably make an appearance at some point, with two at the top magnetized to Ant. Blitzing him on ball screens will test his capability — and just as importantly, his willingness — to make the right read out of the advantage he creates.

Murray is the more advanced playmaker of the two, and he has the benefit of sharing the court with an offensive weapon who demands even more attention than him. But if he’s bringing the ball up, he should expect the Timberwolves to replicate their full-court pressure that caused him so many headaches in 2024.

More likely, the Nuggets will run plenty of sets with him coming off pin-downs and other screens to catch in the flow of their half-court offense, sparing him from the burden of initiating every possession. Murray can breathe a sigh of relief that Nickeil Alexander-Walker left Minnesota for greener pastures in free agency last summer, diminishing the Wolves’ on-ball defensive firepower. Their matchup choices will be fascinating here. Two years ago, Ant often guarded Murray himself and was up to the challenge. His commitment to defense has fluctuated throughout this season (understandable when you’re also the team’s offensive engine). Is he prepared to handle a healthier, more polished Blue Arrow? Or is that a job for Jaden McDaniels alone?

Minnesota’s de facto Alexander-Walker replacement is Ayo Dosunmu, a brilliant trade deadline acquisition who thrives in transition, shoots 44% from deep and could also guard Murray off the bench — if he doesn’t get moved into the starting lineup at some point. Both teams have a veteran, sharpshooting two-guard with a fiery competitive edge. It’s 82-game starter Donte DiVincenzo for Minnesota; it’s Sixth Man of the Year candidate Tim Hardaway Jr. for Denver. Either of these guys could pop off and steal a game for their team at some point in this series.

But so much of this rivalry comes down to Ant, as compelling a Nuggets villain as any. “I think there’s a lot of rivalries in the league right now,” he said Wednesday, “and me and Denver is one them.” For the sake of great television, here’s hoping his recent knee injury doesn’t become a storyline in this series. Who has the edge? Timberwolves.

Frontcourt

This is the first playoff clash between the Nuggets and Timberwolves since the latter swapped out a pretty important variable in its frontcourt — Karl-Anthony Towns for Julius Randle (and DiVincenzo). The surprise blockbuster trade has aged confusingly for Minnesota and New York. Both teams went to the conference finals in 2025. Yet both players have a particular knack for getting their fan bases worked up by their flaws and inconsistencies.

Randle built a decent All-Star candidacy for himself early this season, but struggled at both ends in the second half. He’s 29.9% from 3-point range since Jan. 1. When he and Rudy Gobert are both on the floor, Minnesota’s spacing can get wonky if Randle doesn’t have the ball in his hands. Those lineups risk giving the Nuggets an easy out when they want to defend Edwards aggressively. Over the years, they’ve been more than happy to leave Gobert — a notoriously clunky offensive center — wide open on the short roll. If they’re also willing to ignore Randle on the perimeter, his off-the-catch shooting could become a pressure point in the matchup. KAT’s deadeye 3-point shooting and Gobert’s defensive acumen complemented each other beautifully when Minnesota eliminated Denver two years ago.

Randle is dangerous with the ball, though. Where he’s an upgrade from KAT is in his ability to hunt mismatches and attack smaller defenders. Gordon will guard him for the vast majority of this series and might even mirror minutes, but if the Nuggets try to put him on Edwards at any point, they don’t have great secondary options for Randle. (Zeke Nnaji might be their best bet, but he’s highly unlikely to see the court unless Denver is in foul trouble.) Watson doesn’t have enough strength to hold his ground against the 6-foot-9 power forward. Braun might be to size up to him occasionally, but not probably consistently enough for Denver to give up a switch every time. Could David Adelman test out Jones? It would be a tough assignment for a former two-way player who’s coming off a hamstring injury as he prepares for his first career playoff minutes.

As weird as it sounds, defense might be where the Wolves miss KAT most in this matchup. (This is where Nikola Jokic’s name is finally uttered.) Two years ago, Towns was their primary defender on Jokic, allowing Gobert to roam as a help-side rim protector. KAT is rather famously not known for his defense, but his ability to rise to the occasion and match Jokic’s physicality throughout that series was a remarkable feat, allowing Gobert to do what he does best. It was a huge reason the Timberwolves advanced.

Randle is nowhere near as viable in that scheme, in part because he gives up multiple inches to Jokic, unlike Towns. “Probably gotta call God and talk to him for a little bit and ask him for a few favors,” Randle said this week when asked about how to guard the three-time MVP center. Jokic is averaging 35.5 points, 11.3 rebounds and 10.4 assists in eight games against Minnesota since the KAT trade, shooting 62.1% from the field. Randle and Gobert played in all eight. How often will the Wolves want to try the Randle matchup arrangement? How long will they be willing to stick with it? Gobert is an all-time defender, but if he has to guard Jokic straight up, Jokic typically finds ways to win that battle as well (and Minnesota tends to double-team his post-ups less than other teams do).

One of the most effective strategies against Jokic around the NBA has been to front him with a smaller player who can get away with more contact. (See Alex Caruso, Game 7 in Oklahoma City.) The Timberwolves could try that with a scrappy guard like DiVincenzo, a lanky athletic wing like McDaniels, or even with veteran forward Kyle Anderson, a buyout acquisition who was also pursued by Denver. Adelman predicted Edwards could try to guard Jokic at some point. Whichever way the Wolves configure their matchups, their help defense will be coming from Braun this year instead of Gordon, who has evolved into a lethal spot-up shooter since 2024. Braun regressed to 30% from 3-point range this season while battling an ankle injury. He’ll be the disregarded role player if and when Rudy roams. Minnesota is more likely to stay home on Cam Johnson, whether it’s McDaniels matching up — he’s the best perimeter defender in this series — or DiVincenzo. Who has the edge? Nuggets.

Bench depth

Both coaches will have to gauge how deep they want to go into their benches early in this series, which could lead to some interesting dynamics. Minnesota has at least two high-level reserves in Dosunmu and backup big man Naz Reid. Beyond that, Chris Finch’s rotation could vary night to night. Anderson adds value as a defender and playmaker, but lineups involving him will also sacrifice spacing. Terrence Shannon Jr. or ex-Nugget Bones Hyland could be used as a sparkplug if Minnesota needs scoring. Mike Conley is a veteran with Finch’s supreme trust; his ability to eat minutes could be tested.

When the Nuggets are healthy, they have known entities off their bench in Watson, Hardaway and Brown, though their trust in Watson as a ball-handler might be tested in these playoffs. The backup center minutes will be a fascinating element of this series in particular. If the Wolves make sure Reid is on the court whenever Jokic isn’t, they might be able to take away Jonas Valanciunas completely. Reid can pick-and-pop teams to death, and the easiest way to guard him on the perimeter might be with a more switchable lineup, using Jones at the five. On the other hand, if the Nuggets want to force the issue, they could try to get Valanciunas a few minutes against Gobert, though that might mean altering Jokic’s sub pattern. Julian Strawther is Denver’s Shannon equivalent — a young guard who’s probably out of the rotation but capable of changing a game if he gets hot. Who has the edge? Timberwolves — until Watson and Jones are cleared.

— Bennett Durando, The Denver Post

Nuggets vs. Timberwolves: 5 storylines to watch

Frenemies: Channels of communication are wide open between these two franchises, based on their hiring practices. Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly left Denver for Minnesota in 2022, taking front-office employees like Jon Wallace with him. Wallace left the Wolves last summer for the co-general manager job back in Denver. Both head coaches have been assistants for the other team. And don’t forget Minnesota guard Bones Hyland, who the Nuggets once traded in an addition-by-subtraction deadline move the year they won the title.

The end of the trilogy: The Nuggets took down Minnesota in 2023, beginning their road to the first championship in franchise history. It was only a five-game first-round series, but the seeds of begrudging respect were nonetheless planted, as Bruce Brown described it as the toughest series Denver had played. The Wolves got payback in 2024 with a 20-point second-half comeback to win Game 7 at Ball Arena. Eight current Denver players were on that team. They haven’t forgotten the sting.

The beginning of the road: The Nuggets are facing a nightmarish path to the NBA Finals, with arguably the three best teams in the West (other than themselves) standing in their way. First, it’s Minnesota. Second and third, barring upsets, are San Antonio and Oklahoma City. If Denver can somehow get through this series efficiently, it would do wonders for the team’s stamina and health going forward. Game 7s are likely in store eventually if the Nuggets are going to pull off a run for the ages.

Rudy vs. Joker: This is the fourth playoff clash between them, dating back to Gobert’s time in Utah. Way back then in the 2020 bubble, a memorable first-round series ended with Jokic scoring a beautiful hook shot over Gobert to give Denver the lead for good with 27 seconds left in Game 7. “I like his humility,” Gobert said this week. “I think he’s someone that doesn’t really care about the outside noise. He’s just here to show up, help his team win and go home. I like that. I respect that.” Jokic hates to admit it, but his eyes often light up at the opportunity to prove the best offense is superior to the best defense. The Joker vs. Rudy post-ups will be highlights in this series, one way or the other.

Wild card Watson: Peyton Watson’s lack of a contract extension has loomed over his breakout fourth season. He’s entering a crucial playoff run now that should be significant in determining his value as a restricted free agent this summer. But a suddenly gimpy right hamstring stands between him and the spotlight right now. He missed 25 of Denver’s last 30 regular-season games after suffering a grade two strain on Feb. 4. It’s been more than two weeks since he last played, and Denver still has some anxiety about his status. If and when he’s able to return, he may have to find ways to be impactful that don’t appear on the stat sheet. His on-ball and help-side defense will be invaluable to the Nuggets if they’re going to make a deep run.

Nuggets vs. Timberwolves series predictions

Bennett Durando, Nuggets beat writer: I’ve got too much respect for Ant, and too much lingering skepticism about Denver’s point-of-attack defense, to predict a short series. But two years after the Wolves danced on Denver’s grave, I think the Nuggets return the favor. This one ends in Minnesota’s house. Nuggets in six.

Troy Renck, sports columnist: This is a real rivalry. Since 2022, counting the regular and postseason, the teams are 14-14 over 28 games. But Minnesota is no longer the boogeyman. Anthony Edwards is a human highlight, but has not been healthy. He might steal a game. He is not swiping a series. The Nuggets will win the offensive boards, and even if Christian Braun struggles from 3 when dared to shoot, Minnesota will have no answer for Nikola Jokic. As is always the case when these two play. Nuggets in six.

Sean Keeler, sports columnist: Keep those rosary beads handy whenever Aaron Gordon grabs his hammy. The Nuggets didn’t have Cam Johnson, Bruce Brown or Tim Hardaway Jr. in the 2024 conference finals — and Hardaway has been a quiet thorn in the side of Minnesota defenders for years. This is why you got ’em. Nobody can really guard Anthony Edwards when he wants it. Same for Nikola Jokic. If the Nuggets get more offense from THEIR wings than Minnesota gets from Gobert/Randle, they’ll be good. Ant-Man says the Wolves sandbagged the regular season. Prove it. Nuggets in seven.

Luca Evans, sports reporter: Anthony Edwards has hit the peak of flame-throwing powers like never before seen in 2025-26, which puts somewhat suspect Denver perimeter defense under massive stress. The Timberwolves have an ascending Jaden McDaniels to toss at Jamal Murray, and rotational options at center with all-time-great defender Rudy Gobert and sixth man Naz Reid. But the Nuggets have finally unlocked their late-game flow across this 12-game winning streak, and are ready for revenge in Minnesota. Nuggets in seven. 

Nate Peterson, sports editor: The fix for the Nuggets’ Ant problem? Too much offense and just enough defense to win the 2026 Tim Connelly Bowl. Denver has reeled off 12 straight wins entering the playoffs, and with Aaron Gordon healthy and Spencer Jones and Peyton Watson likely available to start this series, Minnesota will avoid a sweep but won’t push this thing the distance. The Nuggets’ starting five with AG has obliterated opponents all season long with a +12.5 net rating. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s starting five with a less explosive Ant-Man has limped to the finish line with only a +0.1 net rating since the All-Star break. Nuggets in five. 

If the Nuggets were trying to steer clear of Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves in the NBA Playoffs, they’d have pulled Nikola Jokic out of the Spurs game Sunday after about 40 seconds instead of the half.

Load management in April should apply to Timberwolves faithful, too.

Especially when it’s a load of complete and utter crapola.

“You can’t duck opponents and (the Spurs) didn’t want to duck us,” Denver coach David Adelman said after the Nuggets won in San Antonio with a little Joker and a lot of bench mob minutes to clinch the 3 seed in the West. “We’re not ducking anybody.”

And why should they?

This ain’t 2024 anymore. The Nuggets took three of four from Minnesota, their first-round playoff opponent, during the regular season. Denver scored at least 108 points against the T-Wolves in all four of those meetings, something they haven’t done against their conference rivals since the 2020-21 season.

We’ve heard plenty of yapping about how Tim Connelly, Minnesota’s president of basketball operations, built the Nuggets into a championship club, then went north to build a beast that could nullify their strengths.

Only that pipeline works both ways now, boys and girls. The Kroenkes last June hired Jon Wallace to be Denver’s new executive vice president of player personnel, snapping him up from … Minnesota, where Wallace worked in the Twin Cities under Connelly, his old Nuggets boss, for three seasons.

You usually don’t land good free agents without some stellar work by various double agents first. Which is why it’s probably not a coincidence that one of the first things Wallace and front-office partner Ben Tenzer did once they got the keys was sign a player who drove Minnesota defenders up the Berlin Wall.

The Nuggets that Minnesotans have labeled an easy mark didn’t have this version of Peyton Watson two years ago. Or this version of Julian Strawther. Or Bruce Brown. Or Cam Johnson. Or Jonas Valanciunas. Or Tim Hardaway Jr.

Hardaway fit Adelman’s system like a glove. He settled in as the perfect shooting complement to Jokic, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon. And Wallace had remembered how No. 10 used to light up the T-Wolves like it was Christmas in Times Square.

Hardaway, the Nuggets’ veteran sixth man, heads into the series averaging 16.6 points per game against Minnesota during the regular season over a 12-year NBA career. He’s averaged 2.7 treys against the T-Wolves lifetime. Hardaway was good for 3.8 3-pointers and 19.6 points per game against Minnesota this year. The 6-foot-5 wing knocked down second-most treys ever (224) in a season by a Nugget who wasn’t Murray (245). He passed Michael Porter Jr. (220) for second place on that list next week, and isn’t getting nearly enough love nationally for NBA Sixth Man of the Year honors.

“I don’t know how he’s not (getting more),” Murray noted recently. “He’s scoring in bunches. He’s not just coming in and just making shots. He’s doing a lot. He’s talking. He’s into the ball. He’s engaged in every shot. He’s engaged in every opportunity he has. He’s a starter out there.”

More importantly for this matchup, he’s a starter who’ll play a lot in those non-Jokic minutes where the Timberwolves used to feast. Two years ago against Minnesota in the conference semis, the Nuggets’ bench was outscored by the Wolves’ bench by an average of 24-17 per tilt during the series. Over the seven games, only once (Game 5) did Denver’s reserves outscore Minnesota’s (16-15). Take out Game 5, and the Nuggets’ bench got boat-raced by almost 10 points per contest (26-17).

Hardaway changes that math.

Gordon’s hamstring notwithstanding, No. 10 might be the most important Nugget — or “swing” Nugget — in the entire series.

Since the fall of 2019, Hardaway’s teams are 8-4 in the regular season against Minnesota whenever he’s scored 19 points or more. The Nuggets were 14-6 (.700) during the ’25-26 regular season when he put up at least 19 points. When he made at least four treys in a game, Denver went 20-8 (.714).

In their last four playoff games vs. Minnesota two springs ago, the Nuggets got seven 3-point makes, total, from their bench. In his four appearances against the Wolves with Denver this season, Hardaway drained 15 treys. All by himself.

This ain’t 2024 anymore. Hardaway Jr. has won 10 of his last 18 visits to Minneapolis and sports a 2-0 career mark there during the NBA postseason. He’s averaged 15.5 points in the Twin Cities as a pro and put up 21.5 per game against the Minnesota Gophers while at Michigan.

“He knows how to affect the game in his own way and just be super aggressive,” Murray said of Hardaway after he helped topple Denver outlast the Timberpups this past December. “He understands the game — time of the game, flow of the game, where to find shots, (and how to) just be a winner. He cares about playing hard.

“Whether he’s missing or making shots, he keeps that same energy, that same aggressiveness. That’s all you can ask for. He has been a true veteran for us.”

This ain’t 2024 anymore. These Nuggets have got their ducks in a row. And watching the Timberwolves goofs who’ve barked on social media eat their words is going to be absolutely quacktacular.

In this corner: the first-place Oklahoma City Thunder, resting nine rotation players including the reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Defensive Player of the Year candidate Chet Holmgren and 2025 All-NBA wing Jalen Williams. Their absences came as no surprise. With two games left, the Thunder had already clinched the best record in the league and home-court advantage in any playoff series. There was nothing left to play for — all risk, no reward. In fact, OKC was incentivized to lose to the Nuggets and shepherd them to the opposite side of the playoff bracket as a No. 3 seed. That way, the defending champs would only have to face one of the Nuggets or Spurs in a hypothetical path to the NBA Finals.

In the other corner: third-place Denver, minus the entire starting lineup. Offered a symbolic handshake agreement by OKC avoid each other until the Western Conference Finals, the Nuggets threw a late-breaking curveball instead. Most of their normal rotation would also be sitting out, coach David Adelman announced 90 minutes before tip.

The official injury report designations: Nikola Jokic out for right wrist injury management. Jamal Murray out for right shoulder impingement. Aaron Gordon out for right hamstring injury management. Cam Johnson out for right ankle injury management. Christian Braun out for left ankle injury management and a right hip flexor strain.

“What’s on the injury report is what they’re out with,” Adelman said. “They’re dealing with a lot more than that physically, not to mention some of the soft tissue stuff. Scary kinds of injuries. … ‘Hey, we’re the three-seed, but we don’t have three starters’ — it doesn’t sound like a great solution.”

Denver’s junior-varsity roster pulled away late for a 127-107 victory nonetheless, clinching home-court advantage in the first round. Oklahoma City escaped with the outcome it wanted. But the Nuggets’ unexpected lineup decision will loom into Sunday evening, when they close out the regular season at San Antonio.

Their situation is simple now.

The Nuggets will be the No. 3 seed and face Minnesota if they beat San Antonio or if the Lakers lose to Utah in a coinciding game. San Antonio would be Denver’s likely second-round opponent.

The Nuggets will be the No. 4 seed and face Houston if they lose to San Antonio and the Lakers beat Utah. Oklahoma City would be Denver’s likely second-round opponent.

Utah will be trying to lose Sunday for draft lottery purposes. The Lakers will be heavily favored, even without Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves.

That leaves Denver at San Antonio as the major swing game of the night for seeding.

So what exactly do the Nuggets want here? Their decision to rest all five starters Friday signaled a desire to avoid Minnesota, fall to fourth place and set up an earlier OKC series, leaving people around the NBA puzzled. But the situation is at least nuanced enough that it depends who you ask. Several team sources told The Denver Post they would personally prefer to compete for the No. 3 seed. Others were torn on which potential path would be more advantageous between Minnesota-San Antonio and Houston-Oklahoma City. Ultimately, the lineup conversation Friday went upstairs beyond the coaching staff, according to two of those sources.

“The matchups with those teams, I’ll be honest, there’s so much unknown. I think people need to calm down with ‘Let’s play the Lakers,'” Nuggets head coach David Adelman said, before Los Angeles was mathematically ruled out as a possible first-round opponent late Friday night. “If Luka comes back and feels good, do you want to play Luka Doncic? Like, I think you’re messing with the game when you think that.

“Us and Minnesota, it’s been a crazy back-and-forth over the years. They swept us last year, but then we beat them three out of four this year. We always know it’s competitive with them. They’ve given us issues. We’ve given them issues. And then obviously Houston, I mean, they’re playing so well right now. … So there’s no good opponent in my opinion. I think you just have to play it out with decisions that are best for your team, and we feel like tonight, this is the best decision.”

The Nuggets have had internal conversations about the matchup scenarios, of course. That����ap normal for a contender in a situation like this.

Those conversations, if you’re to believe the team’s framing, revealed a lot of gray area. And in fairness to that framing, any two Nuggets fans sitting in a bar could have a reasonable pros-and-cons debate about this topic.

Is Houston a more palatable matchup than a familiar rival like Minnesota in the first round? Maybe, but Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels have also been dealing with injuries recently. Vibes have been off with the Wolves.

If Oklahoma City is considered a tougher opponent than the inexperienced Spurs, wouldn’t it be prudent to land on San Antonio’s side of the bracket and stay away from OKC as long as possible? Maybe, but on the other hand, playing the Thunder sooner — with fewer miles on Aaron Gordon’s hamstring in particular — theoretically gives you a better chance of starting and finishing that series with a healthy team.

Or does it even matter when you play OKC and when you play San Antonio, if you’re expecting you’ll have to face both eventually anyway? Does that mean decisions should be made with only the first-round opponent in mind? Or if you’re a “championship or bust” team, as Julian Strawther put it Friday, shouldn’t you be confident you’ll win the first-round series regardless of the opponent and therefore make these decisions based on later rounds?

There isn’t necessarily a right answer to any of these questions.

Only one variable was completely unambiguous: Nothing else matters if the roster isn’t healthy. So injury avoidance was treated as a higher priority than seeding, as multiple team sources rationalized to The Post.

Still, Denver’s willingness to risk losing Friday’s game on paper — forget for a moment that the players refused to punt it in actuality — suggested at least some degree of organizational wariness about the Timberwolves, even if nobody wanted to admit it. Denver has already faced them twice in the last three postseasons. Minnesota has gone farther in the playoffs than Denver in back-to-back years.

Assuming the Nuggets rest most of their starters again on Sunday, that outside perception will only be amplified.

Adding to the intrigue, San Antonio is now incentivized to beat the Nuggets for the same reason Oklahoma City was incentivized to lose to them. If Denver falls to fourth place, the Spurs will ensure that they only have to play one of Denver or OKC in the playoffs. Is that a worthwhile reason for them to play their starters when they’re already locked in as the No. 2 seed? Even if Victor Wembanyama rests, which seems likely, San Antonio can roll out a  competitive lineup spearheaded by one of the best backcourts in the league.

Then there’s Jokic, who still hasn’t met the 65-game minimum to qualify for awards such as MVP and All-NBA. He has to play at least 15 minutes Sunday if he wants to appear on ballots. He’s expected to play, one team source said, but the final decision on his status will include input from both him and team ownership.

“Obviously, the success in the playoffs matters more than anything else. But this rule stares at us right now,” Adelman said. “So we’ve gotta make a proper decision, and we need to go in there with a real plan. … Either it is those minutes, or we say let’s just move on.”

Of course, if Jokic does play even 15 minutes, the Nuggets will be substantially increasing their chances of leaving San Antonio with a win. And that might not be what everyone in the building wants.

Adelman said that’s not even necessary in Jamal Murray’s case.

“I really hope All-NBA is something that is obvious and not an argument,” the first-year Nuggets coach said recently.

Murray set his sights on one of the 15 All-NBA spots this February, immediately after he was named an All-Star for the first time in his career. He seems to be closing in on accomplishing that goal, especially as other candidates have lost their eligibility late in the season. Murray has already secured his place on the ballot by appearing in 65 games. He ranked seventh in the league in total minutes played, with 400 more than his next-closest teammate as of Friday, before Denver (52-28) hosted Oklahoma City.

In addition to buoying the Nuggets through months of injuries, Murray has played in eight overtime games. He logged 38 or more minutes for the 23rd time on Monday in a comeback win over Portland.

“His game has kind of spoken for itself,” Christian Braun said. “His approach every night has been amazing. … He’s been amazing for us. He’s been available for us. Seems like every night, he’s on the court. He’s a killer. That’s just who he is. I don’t think there’s any debate that he’s an All-NBA player this year.”

Braun described it as Murray’s best individual year. The numbers continue to agree. He’s averaging career highs in points (25.4), rebounds (4.4) and assists (7.1) as the regular season winds down. He’s one of nine players with five 40-point games. The Nuggets have won every one of them.

He reached another milestone in a recent win over Utah. With 1:15 to play, the 29-year-old guard broke Denver’s franchise record for 3-pointers in a single season, previously held by Michael Porter Jr. (220). It gave the Nuggets a 129-126 lead over the Jazz and inspired Murray to break out his “Blue Arrow” celebration for just the second time this season. When asked if he knew about the record, Murray said that Altitude’s Katy Winge had informed him he was close to passing Porter during a halftime interview.

Make no mistake, though, he added: The celebration was for a go-ahead shot, not a record-breaking shot.

“I just wanted to win,” he explained. “We were down. I wasn’t even (thinking about the record). We had a lot of season to break that.”

Murray and Hornets rookie Kon Knueppel have been way ahead of the pack as the NBA’s two best volume 3-point shooters, locked in a race for the most efficient season. Among the 71 players who had taken 350 or more 3s as of Friday, Murray’s 43.5% clip was the best in the league, on 563 attempts. Knueppel was second at 42.9% on 624 attempts.

“I’m just chucking them,” Murray said, smirking, when asked what’s gone right.

“The work he’s put in, the ability to step back off both hands and make 3s is such a big deal,” Adelman said. “Certain guys can do it with one hand. They have to manipulate the play to get to their left or their right. And he’s gotten to the point where it doesn’t matter which side he goes to. Not to mention the transition 3s. The off-the-bounce stuff is just unbelievable.

“… Such a weapon to have a guy who can make 3s in all situations, not just a specialist that can make it in certain situations.”

All-NBA selections became position-less in 2024 after a new collective bargaining agreement went into effect, meaning Murray won’t be inhibited by the disproportionate number of guards to bigs among the candidates. Under the current rules, All-NBA basically celebrates the 15 best players in a given season, as long as they’ve played at least 65 games.

All-Stars such as Cade Cunningham and Anthony Edwards have been out recently, eliminating their chances of making the threshold. Nuggets center Nikola Jokic has been on the edge of eligibility since he returned from a knee injury at the end of January.

Lakers star Luka Doncic is asking the league to grant him an exception after falling one game short of the minimum, his agent announced recently. An “extraordinary circumstances” clause in the CBA permits arbitration in certain cases; Doncic argues that the two games he missed due to the birth of his child in Slovenia shouldn’t count against him. However, he was also suspended recently for what would have been his 65th game after picking up his 16th technical foul of the year.

Meanwhile, Murray has avoided the drama of rulebook semantics. He has entered another red-hot stretch in April — 44 of 86 from 3-point range (51%) in his last nine games.

“When he gets in a rhythm and he lets that kind of take over his flow, there’s certain things that he does as a shooter that lends really well to being able to recreate the environments of shooting that he wants,” Nuggets sharpshooter Cam Johnson marveled. “He’s able to get under the ball. Get arc on it. So there’s a lot less variance with his shots. It’s very repeatable. Which just means he’s a very good shooter. He’s been that way his whole career. He’s very comfortable here, in this building, and he’s been doing it a long time.”