The Denver Nuggets and the Minnesota Timberwolves face off tonight in an early-season matchup of divisional rivals. The Nuggets are coming off a home blowout win against the Phoenix Suns on Saturday while the Wolves outlasted the Indiana Pacers on Sunday night. All-Star guard Anthony Edwards left the Pacers game with hamstring tightness and his status is not yet confirmed against Denver, but regardless of whether he plays the Nuggets know they are going to get Minnesota’s absolute best effort.
On the road, Denver will need to find the defense they struggled to locate against the Golden State Warriors earlier in the week, as well as a consistent paint presence from Nikola Jokic who has contented himself with a few outside shots on the way to a pair of low-scoring triple-doubles to start the season. Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray have both looked focused and fearsome to start the year, while Cam Johnson and Christian Braun are getting into the flow. Denver is warming up, Minnesota is ready for a fight, and this rivalry game should a fun early-season battle.
The Basics
Who: Denver Nuggets (1-1) at Minnesota Timberwolves (2-1)
When: 7:30 PM MDT
Where: Target Center, Minneapolis MN
How to watch/listen: Peacock, Altitude/ + / Radio. Dress in purple and say you are there to take final measurements for the Prince-themed City Edition court.
Rival Blog: Canis Hoopus
Injury Report: Nuggets, none. Timberwolves: Anthony Edwards – questionable (hamstring).
The Three Things
The thing to watch for: The availability of Anthony Edwards
Denver doesn’t have any listed injury concerns, but Ant’s availability for this early-season clash is absolutely up in the air especially on the back-to-back. He had back spasms listed to start the year, then only played 3 minutes against the Pacers before leaving with hamstring tightness. I would expect the Wolves to be cautious considering this game is in October and not April or May, but with Bones Hyland and Mike Conley available for extra duty that just shifts more of the scoring burden to Julius Randle and Jaden McDaniels while keeping the animosity high for this one. Denver would not be sad to miss a classic Ant performance, but also have to know that nothing in this rivalry comes easy and it will be a war regardless.
The thing to remember: Jokic can control the game in more than one way, but right now Denver needs to lean into offense
Jokic feels like he’s been messing around the first two games, which just speaks to the incredibly high standard he has set in every game this decade. He is averaging 17.5 / 13.5 / 12.5 but only on 45.2% eFG%, and he’s shooting 2-for-16 from deep. Whether it’s his conditioning or his desire to get his teammates involved, the Nuggets will need him to play more inside the paint than he has been, as Rudy Gobert and Julius Randle will surely have their own interior plans both on offense or defense. The Nuggets have looked great on offense with so many wide open looks, and cashing those in is key.
But Jokic forcing teams to focus on him will keep those looks open and with Denver’s new defensive scheme very much a work in progress they have to ride their offense to early-season wins. The Nuggets gave up 50 three-point attempts to the Suns and could not out-rebound the much smaller Warriors – they cannot afford to play that way against the Wolves, and their offensive attack and will be a key tone-setter by getting Joker into the positions on both sides of the ball that give them the advantage on the boards and being aggressive.
The thing to bet: Jamal Murray assists (over)
Jamal has looked really great in the first week of the season, and with Edwards either missing or hampered it frees up Jamal to work his way through his setups. Hyland is not big enough to limit Jamal’s offensive execution and in fact that bit of rivalry from their Denver days plays into Jamal’s desire to take over the game. In this case though, taking over for him is likely to be finding the open man and kicking off of drives to the basket rather than challenging Rudy directly. With Jokic’s ability to screen Jamal open for those drives away from Donte DiVincenzo as well as getting the ball to both his 7-footers on the block for scoring opportunities, I expect Mal to have a really good game orchestrating the offense both for the starters and the bench.
