The Denver Nuggets are defending NBA champions — and the favorites to come out of the Western Conference again — for multiple reasons.
They have the best player in basketball in Nikola Jokic. Jamal Murray is an all-star caliber guard. Their starting five fits together like a glove.
And, just as importantly, the Nuggets win games on the margins.
They’re the best clutch-time team in the NBA, dominating the final five minutes of tight contests. They’re relentlessly efficient and opportunistic. One brief lapse of play by the opponent at any point in the contest, and the Nuggets will likely emerge victorious.
Just ask the Lakers, who led for much of their first-round series against Denver, yet were ousted in five games.
“They’re a machine. They don’t make mistakes. They don’t beat themselves,” Timberwolves guard Mike Conley said. “That’s where our discipline has to be able to come into play.”
Which, a year ago, would’ve been a frightening proposition for Minnesota. The 2022-23 Wolves were talented but often tripped over their own feet thanks to a slew of self-inflicted mental errors. They were undisciplined and immature, often at the most inopportune times.
“Yeah, I think our emotional control was really disappointing at times,” president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said at last year’s end-of-season availability.
Connelly went into last offseason noting a large focus would be placed on guys being more mature when things didn’t go their way.
“I think the best teams, oftentimes, are the teams that are most able to emotionally be kind of consistent in the inevitable ups and downs,” he said. “So, that’s a focus we’re going to have internally for sure.”
It’s a major credit to the Timberwolves that they’ve taken major strides in those departments this season. You don’t win 56 regular season contests without consistency and discipline.
Anthony Edwards certainly piled up technical fouls but, as a whole, the Timberwolves — while emotional — generally kept their heads above water and focused on the task at hand. That was especially true in their first-round victory over Phoenix.
But Denver figures to test Minnesota’s resolve at a higher level, because the Nuggets will make runs. They will force errors. They will cause mental fatigue and, with it, frustration.
“They’re a team that wears you down,” Conley said. “Mentally, you can have a 5- to 10-point lead late in the game, and, boom, they’re back in it and they take control of the game. They find ways to make plays, timely plays.
“So for us, you just gotta not let that wear on you. You’re not going to have those games where you win by 20. You’re not going to have those games where it’s a big blow out. It’s gonna be tight games. It’s gonna be rough and physical. You’ve gotta be able to withstand their runs all the things that they throw at you.”
Wolves assistant coach Micah Nori said the team went over video on Thursday showing how, if you complain about a call or simply fall asleep at the wheel, Jokic and Co. will capitalize for an easy bucket.
“So, just as a matter of fact, there can be no lag times,” Nori said. “And the attention to detail, we did a great job with it in Phoenix, I thought, but even more so this series with how they take advantage of it. And even dropping the ball and rolling it (to burn time), just little things that you have to be on high alert, pick up a little bit more full court, so they can’t take one of those precious few seconds.”
Everything matters in what’s expected to be a tightly-contested series. Karl-Anthony Towns said Denver’s execution and discipline is “second to none.”
“So we’ve got to be willing to play for 48 minutes. We’ve had moments in the Suns series where we had some slippage, where it didn’t look like we were playing all 48 minutes — maybe 44, 45 minutes,” Towns said. “But with a team like this you can’t afford to have those three minutes, even two minutes, of slippage where you’re not playing disciplined basketball. Because they’re just so good of capitalizing on those moments of not just weakness, but slippage in our offense or defense.”
Conley said the Wolves can’t foul or give up shortcuts. They have to minimize all mistakes in between the lines to take max advantage of their athleticism and skill, which they feel match up well with Denver.
“We feel we have a lot of guys that can go out there and score and defend and play up and down, so then it becomes the mental part,” Conley said. “The little details that we have to be 100% sure on, really sharp on.”
If they do that, the Timberwolves could very well knock off the champs and, in the process, show themselves to be a championship-caliber club. The Wolves have the talent to defeat Denver. Do they also have the mental fortitude?
It’s time to see just how far the Wolves have come over the past year.
“We’re playing the best team in the league and the defending champs, so it’ll be a great test for us just to see how we can have emotional control — which I thought was excellent in the first series — and game-plan discipline,” Connelly said Thursday. “It’s not about playing perfect basketball. There’s plenty of things we can do better. We can execute better. Those things are controllable, and for us to get to where we want to go, we have to control those things at an elite level.”
OWNERS DISPUTE HEADING TO ARBITRATION
The Timberwolves and Lynx ownership dispute will move into arbitration after mediation concluded this week with no resolution, according to multiple media reports.
Glen Taylor contends that Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore broke the purchase agreement, allowing him to remain the majority owner of the organization, while Rodriguez and Lore believe they honored the contract.
The arbitration process likely won’t take place anytime soon. Should Lore and Rodriguez emerge victorious in that process, they would still need to be approved by the NBA Board of Governors to become majority team owners.
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