The Timberwolves defeated the Nuggets, 110-98, to win the series, 4-2, and advance to the Western Conference Semifinals.
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Whether true or concocted, the Minnesota Timberwolves used some mental gymnastics to heighten their motivation against the Denver Nuggets, a legit championship contender the Wolves just ousted in the first round Thursday night.
Neither Nikola Jokić nor Jamal Murray played up to the postseason levels to which they and the Nuggets had grown accustomed. Credit Minnesota’s defense for much of that. The Nuggets’ limitations were exposed in a variety of ways, up to and including their 110-98 Game 6 loss at Target Center.
It was the third game in the series, all in Minnesota, in which the league’s most prolific offense – the Nuggets averaged 122.1 points in the regular season – couldn’t even reach 100. And whatever talent gap might exist between them in normal circumstances did not apply Thursday, given the injuries through which the Wolves played and won.
But Minnesota coach Chris Finch ladled on helpings of “Us vs. Them” in what has been a pretty hot rivalry in recent seasons. The Wolves found some Denver disregard in the West’s final seedings.
“Our guys took it personal,” Finch said. “Denver had the chance to pick who they wanted to play coming down the stretch and they chose us. We used that as a motivation all through preparation and the series. Our guys were up for the challenge of that.”
Denver won its final 12 games to finish third, so it didn’t exactly back its way into the No. 3 vs. No. 6 matchup. But whatever edge the Wolves got from that, it surely didn’t hurt as they advanced to face San Antonio in the conference semifinals.
Here are four takeaways from the Game 6 finale:
1. McDaniels talked it, walked it
Jaden McDaniels scores a game-high 32 points to help seal the Wolves’ Game 6 clincher.
The Wolves’ leading scorer in the clinching game also took on the challenge of guarding the other team’s most explosive weapon. That’s a throwback approach in this league, old school mano a mano, and Jaden McDaniels stuck the landing.
McDaniels essentially used Game 6 to get the last word in a series he agitated both with words and deeds. After Game 2, he went public with his disrespect – by name – for Denver’s defenders. At the end of Game 4, his needless layup triggered Jokić into a skirmish that amped up the jeers he heard back in Denver on Monday and the love he felt at Target Center on Thursday.
“I just didn’t care, I said what I said,” McDaniel said. “I’m not going to stay it again.”
The blanket McDaniels threw over Jamal Murray should have surprised no one. The Denver guard’s history of big scoring performances in elimination games ran smack into the reality of McDaniels’ length, quickness and body control, the Wolves defender proving himself both taller and faster than Murray. Murray’s career season was punctuated by a frosty 4-for-17, just 12 points and a team-worst minus-18 in 40-plus minutes.
“No love lost between the teams,” said Wolves coach Chris Finch. “[Jaden] takes the challenge to guard these guys. He knew he was going to be in a ton of action, he’s going to be hit by a ton of screens, and he’s got to keep chasing and keep fighting.”
McDaniels’ offense has been growing the past couple seasons, but he overachieved out of need in this one. His 32 points were a career high, and with 10 rebounds, he joined Kevin Garnett, Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns as the only 30-10 guys in Minnesota history. He has had only one other game like that in his six NBA seasons.
“I’m not tired at all,” McDaniels said.
2. All hail Minnesota’s ‘others’
The Wolves’ usual starting backcourt was lost in Game 4, when Donte DiVincenzo ruptured his right Achilles tendon and Anthony Edwards suffered a bone bruise and hyperextended left knee. Then Ayo Dosunmu, the breakthrough 43-point scorer that night, popped up on the injury report Thursday and was held out with right calf soreness.
Denver was shorthanded, too, missing both Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson. But the Wolves’ absences were on a different level. And yet they became the first team in NBA playoff history to win a game while missing three players who were averaging 10 points or more in the series.
Without Dosunmu (21.8 ppg), Edwards (18.5) and DiVincenzo (10.8), Finch to shuffle his deck more slickly than a backroom gambler. One of his counters was a “big” lineup planting Julius Randle, Naz Reid and Rudy Gobert together on the front line. He got some solid minutes from that crew.
Finch also started and played veteran point guard Mike Conley for 26 minutes and used deep reserve Jaylen Clark for 12 minutes. Most notably, he told Terrence Shannon Jr. he would be starting.
Shannon, a 6-foot-6 guard from Illinois wrapping up his second season of understudy work, wound up scoring 24 points in 35 minutes. His bursts of speed had the Nuggets on their heels all night, and rim attacks helped the Wolves outscore the visitors in the paint, 64-40.
A backup Finch had pointedly criticized earlier in the series for some game-plan lapses came up big in boosting them into the next round.
“I found out I was starting when I got into the building,” Shannon said. “I still had the same mindset: be aggressive and be better on the defensive end.”
3. Denver stung by early exit
Just three years removed from their NBA championship, the core of this Nuggets team expected better. They had closed the regular season with 12 consecutive victories and angled to face Minnesota, a budding rival with whom they were overly familiar.
Then they never found their “A” game, got exposed defensively as McDaniels had predicted and head into summer with a deeply flawed roster.
“Definitely if we were in Serbia,” Jokić cracked, “we would all get fired.”
There will be calls for change, including the simplest one of blaming the coach. David Adelman said he accepted full responsibility for the playoff fizzle, but Jokić wasn’t having it.
“It’s not his fault that we couldn’t rebound,” the Denver center said. “It’s not his fault that we could not catch the ball. There is nothing to blame David Adelman [for]. It was all us.”
4. Gobert draws another not-so-short straw
If McDaniels was Minnesota’s MVP in the series, Rudy Gobert was NMVP, as in next-most. Accepting and often handling individual defensive chores against Jokić enabled the Wolves to guard the other Nuggets straight up.
Gobert was effective especially in the first four games, helping the Wolves stake that 3-1 lead. And in the clincher, he played like a pocket Joker with 10 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists.
“Rudy was fantastic. I mean, Hall of Fame player, Hall of Fame defender,” McDaniels said. “It’s just on to the next round and he’s got another challenge. I know he’s going to succeed. I know I’m ready to see it.”
A West semifinal matchup with San Antonio locks Gobert into a duel with his fellow Frenchman, Victor Wembanyama. There might be a little extra juice in the matchup for Gobert, since the Spurs’ young center won Kia Defensive Player of the Year unanimously – on a ballot Gobert felt snubbed in not making the Top 3.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.