Two games into the NBA Western Conference semifinals, the Minnesota Timberwolves were not only beating the defending champions, they were punishing them.
The Wolves defense, ranked number one in the league during the regular season, went from impenetrable in Game 1 to downright absurd in Game 2 against the Denver Nuggets. And despite missing the four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobertwho was sidelined from the team for the birth of his first child, Minnesota’s bullying defenders only seemed to multiply.
“I heard someone say there were like seven Timberwolves on the court,” the Minnesota forward told him. Jaden McDaniels to ESPN at the beginning of the series. “It really feels like that when you play defense [con este equipo]”.
After winning Game 1 on the road, the Wolves harassed Nuggets guard, Jamal Murrayuntil achieving a 1 of 10 performance, limited the center Nikola Jokic to eight points, forced the three-time MVP into four turnovers and held Denver to 32.6% shooting en route to a 26-point lead at halftime of Game 2.
It wasn’t just about proper scouting and defensive rotations, either. There was a certain style to Minnesota’s suffocating schemes.
A clip of Nickeil Alexander-Walker, the Wolves’ lanky 6-foot-5 guard pressuring Murray full-court went viral, showing Alexander-Walker flashing an almost manic grin on Murray’s face after absorbing a body blow when Murray He tried to free himself in the center circle. “He was so lost in the flow of everything,” Alexander-Walker said after Game 2.
Minnesota’s pressure on the ball increased even more when McDaniels joined Alexander-Walker. The duo’s double-teaming bothered Murray to the point where the normally steady guard had to get rid of the ball or risk fumbling the ball.
The Wolves, two games into their first conference semifinal appearance in 20 years, were the league’s heroes.
Anthony Edwards, 22, heard comparisons to Michael Jordan for scoring 70 points during the Wolves’ 2-0 start. McDaniels, 23, whom Minnesota coach Chris Finch sometimes refers to as “Scottie Pippen” and who told ESPN: “It seems like my limbs keep growing [y] Sometimes it’s hard to even control my arms because they’re so long,” he was being hailed as a prototypical defensive stopper.
But just 10 days later, the Wolves have lost three straight games for the first time all season and are on the brink of elimination heading into Thursday’s Game 6 at home (8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN). With two must-win games left to salvage one of the franchise’s most successful seasons, how did Minnesota go from being the best in the world to the brink of elimination?
By falling dangerously behind in one of the most intriguing chess games of this postseason.
The Nuggets changed the way they use Murray
The schedule allowed for a rare three-day break as the series moved from Denver to Minneapolis for Game 3. As the Wolves awaited a suspension that never came, and Murray was fined $100,000 for throwing a towel and heating pad into the court in frustration amid Minnesota’s 106-80 victory in Game 2, the time off was beneficial in several ways for the Nuggets.
Murray, who was dealing with a left calf strain he suffered in the first round against the Los Angeles Lakers, was given a chance to rest. Meanwhile, Denver coach Michael Malone had a chance to adjust.
Malone delved into film from the first two games of the series, looking for a way to make Murray look more like the player who earned the reputation as one of the league’s best playoff players.
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Malone found it: taking the ball out of his point guard’s hands and making Jokic or the forward Aaron Gordon They will begin the offensive. Gordon, for his part, brought the ball up on 15 possessions in Game 3 after doing so just 17 times in Games 1 and 2.
The extra touches continued to extend Gordon’s offensive rhythm. After scoring 20 points on 57.1% shooting in Game 2, he averaged 19.7 points on 69.7% shooting in the Nuggets’ next three wins.
Gordon’s activation not only saved Murray from being pressured for 94 feet, but also prevented Gobert (7-foot-1) from positioning himself off the ball as a roving rim protector. And after scoring just eight points on 3-of-18 shooting in Game 2, Murray scored 24 points on 11-of-21 shooting in Game 3 as the Nuggets defeated the Wolves on their own court.
“As Jamal goes, so go we,” a Nuggets source told ESPN after Game 3. “Very simple.”
Murray kept going in Games 4 and 5, averaging 17.5 points on 48.4% shooting and six assists in two more wins to put the Nuggets up 3-2.
Denver exploited the tactic even more in Games 4 and 5. In each of those games, Gobert defended the player who brought the ball up on 18 possessions, according to Second Spectrum monitoring data, tied for his third-most in a game by throughout his 11-year career.
The MVP cooked the Defensive Player of the Year by being even slower
After losing two games at home, the Nuggets returned the favor by winning Games 3 and 4 inside Minnesota’s Target Center. But Edwards made them sweat for it.
He scored 44 points in Game 4, reaching the 40-point mark for the third time this postseason. If it weren’t for an 8-0 run by Denver in the last 20 seconds of the second quarter or Karl-Anthony Towns Going 1 for 10 in the first half en route to a 5 for 18 night, Minnesota could very well have been the team looking to win the series on Thursday.
Game 5 belonged solely to Jokic. And the Nuggets center put on a performance worthy of the MVP trophy he received from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver before the game.
After the Wolves kept Jokic relatively in check in Games 1 and 2 (he averaged 24 points, 12 rebounds and 8.5 assists, but shot 42.1% from the field, 20% from 3-point range with 5.5 turnovers), McDaniels he was still wary of the force they were facing.
“Just him walking on the field makes our antennas go up,” McDaniels told ESPN before Game 3. “Just for this series, when [Jokic] He gets the ball, we try to get to our man because we know how good of a passer he is.
“He can score, too. We’d rather let him score, actually. Just because, let everyone else get involved? It’s over, man.”
Jokic did both in Game 5, scoring 40 points on 15-of-22 shooting and dishing out 13 assists with no turnovers. He did so by going straight for Gobert. After shooting just 11 of 28 (39.3%) with Gobert as his primary defender through the first four games of the series, Jokic shot 8 of 9 against him (88.9%), according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
“I’m just trying to read and be aggressive,” Jokic said after Tuesday’s win. “Today was a very good night for me.”
It was also a methodical night. While Jokic is traditionally quick to make his offensive moves (taking an average of 1.44 dribbles per field goal attempt in the regular season, ranking 46th among 52 players with 1,000 or more shots, according to Second Spectrum), he dribbled the ball a lot more in Game 5.
In 14 touches for Jokic that started in the half-court with Gobert on him, Jokic averaged 2.36 dribbles per touch with an average touch duration of 5.0 seconds. It was the longest average touch duration and most dribbles per touch that Jokic has ever had against a defender in his nine-year career, regular season or playoffs (among games with a minimum of 10 direct touches against a single defender). For Denver, it was another way to limit Gobert from playing his preferred backline wanderer role.
“We know he’s a 1-of-1 type of player. We know he’s going to make unbelievable plays,” Gobert said of Jokic after Game 5. “But we’ve got to keep it up. We’ve got to keep making it difficult for him. … we’ve got to keep playing. and returning to him.”
Ant-Man is missing his defense partner
The only thing the Wolves could count on throughout the series (Edwards’ excellence) took a hit in Game 5.
With the veteran guard Mike Conley Sidelined with a sore right Achilles tendon, the Nuggets hounded Edwards all over the court the same way the Wolves forwards did with Murray to start the series. (Conley was “50-50” to play in Game 5 before being ruled out and there is still hope he will play in Game 6, a Timberwolves source told ESPN.)
Without Conley to share ball-handling duties Tuesday, Edwards controlled the action more than he had all season. His 102 touches tied for the second most he has had in a game in his entire career, including the regular season and playoffs, according to Second Spectrum.
And the Nuggets kept sending him bodies. The 29 double-teams Edwards faced in Game 5 were more than he faced in the first four games of the series combined.
“This was crazy,” Edwards said of the extra defensive attention after finishing with 18 points on 5-of-15 shooting. “Today was crazy, for sure. Yeah, today was wild.”
Which is an appropriate word to describe the series as a whole. Wild anticipation. Wild performances. Wild turns. And wildly successful adjustments by the defending champions against a Wolves team now tasked with making theirs.
2024-05-16 22:56:27
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