The Minnesota Timberwolves' defense is the Denver Nuggets' kryptonite

Esfandiar Baraheni

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The Minnesota Timberwolves' defense is the Denver Nuggets' kryptonite image

There’s a scene in the first Doctor Strange movie where the Sorcerer Supreme has to battle Dormammu, this primordial being that dwells over the ‘Dark Dimension’ and wants to take over the world. It’s all very typical superhero speak. Anyways, in this scene, Strange has to keep going back in time to learn how to defeat Dormammu, dying an infinite amount of times until he finally finds a way to beat him. By the end, Strange knew exactly where Dormammu was going to be, what he was going to do, and how he was going to win. 

That’s how it feels watching the Minnesota Timberwolves defend the Denver Nuggets.

This primordial being (in the case of the Nuggets, their typically unflappable offense led by Nikola Jokic) has been reduced to a pile of sludge by a resilient cast in the Timberwolves, who are operating as time-travelers, able to predict where the Nuggets want to go, what they want to achieve, and how they’re going to win. 

In the first half of Game 2 in Denver, the Wolves limited the Nuggets to 35 points, their second-lowest total in franchise history. The Nuggets had a 76.1 offensive rating in the first half. Since Jokic became a full-time starter, their worst offensive rating in any game is 79.7. By the end of the game, the Wolves had contained the league's fifth-best offensive team this season to just 80 points, their lowest total since the 2017-18 season. 

By the way, they did all of this without the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year, Rudy Gobert, who was absent from Game 2 due to the birth of his child. 

Still, that didn’t matter much, if at all, for Minnesota. The Timberwolves’ No. 1-ranked defense made Denver look like it was playing a completely different sport, surgically dissecting the Nuggets' gameplan with a disciplined game plan that has forced Jokic and Jamal Murray into some of their worst games in a Nuggets uniform. 

But how exactly are they doing this? 

Incredible On-Ball Pressure 

The Timberwolves haven’t wasted any time locking in. As soon as the Nuggets in-bound the ball, one of Murray or Jokic is being face-guarded the entire way up the court, hounded by the length, lateral speed, and physicality of Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Jaden McDaniels, or Anthony Edwards. 

In Game 2, 64 of the Nuggets' 83 shot attempts were taken with less than 15 seconds left on the shot clock, including 22 shots deemed ‘late’ or ‘very late’ by the NBA’s tracking data. 

This is because of Minnesota's relentless pressure up the court. Neither Murray nor Jokic were given any room to breathe, and it resulted in possessions that looked like this: 

This hasn’t helped Murray, who admittedly is dealing with a calf injury, create a modicum of separation or space on his looks. Even when someone sets a screen for Murray, he still has to worry about the rear-side contests and the length of Alexander-Walker, McDaniels, and Edwards making his shots even more difficult. Murray is shooting 26% from the field in the first two games of this series. 

Help-Side Recovery 

That same length on the perimeter is causing problems for the Nuggets, even when they get the Timberwolves’ defense in rotation. 

McDaniels is a +40 in this series despite scoring a grand total of 5 points because his ability to serve as the low-man in the Timberwolves defense makes him the perfect weak-side help.

Even without Gobert, the Nuggets had length in the frontcourt to throw at Jokic with Karl-Anthony Towns, Naz Reid, and Kyle Anderson serving as the primary defenders on the two-time MVP. But McDaniels played his part as the help, selling out on drives to contest his shots at the rim, digging down on his drives to make him second-guess himself. 

Size and length, in general, are causing problems for the Nuggets. Denver is used to being the bigger team against virtually any opponent they face. With Jokic, Michael Porter Jr., and Aaron Gordon, they have the size to outmatch anyone in that department.

Well, almost anyone.

Until the Timberwolves upped the ante with their size, length, and speed, which forced Denver to deal with a reality where they aren’t the biggest team on the court. On any given possession last night, Denver thought they might have created an advantage only for a Timberwolves defender to slide into the right position at exactly the right time to nullify the advantage because Minnesota’s countless limbs allowed them to do so.

Watch as Alexander-Walker pressures Gordon on this drive and forces him to the help side where McDaniels is waiting to contest the layup. 

Or on this possession, watch as Jokic is hounded by Reid on the inside, with limbs being sent from multiple directions resulting in three point-blank misses for Joker. 

It was bizarre to watch an offense like the Nuggets – who at their best are akin to a hive-like mind that operates as one succinct organism, preordained to create quality offensive outcomes on the basketball court – completely crumble and wither away, with players stumbling and falling to the ground, not on the same page or even on the same book. 

It’s as if the Timberwolves had already played this game a million times over and knew exactly what the Nuggets would do – as if they were time-travelers from a distant future sent to stop Denver from repeating as champions and causing a ripple in the space-time continuum. 

It's worth noting that Tim Connelly, the man who built the Nuggets – this high-octane offense led by one of the greatest and most uniquely talented big men in NBA history – also helped build their kryptonite in the Timberwolves – a team with no defensive flaws built off a single core premise applicable in basketball: size, length, and speed reign supreme every single time. 

And with that recipe, the Timberwolves seem to be a team of destiny, well on their way to their first Conference Finals berth in 20 years thanks to their well-rounded and disciplined defensive approach that can only be explained by time travel.

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