The battered Denver Nuggets hope to give the Minnesota Timberwolves some coal for their Christmas stocking as the two teams meet in the Mile High city tonight. Denver has won both meetings in Minnesota already this year, so to avoid giving the Nuggets the tie-breaker Minnesota needs a win tonight. The Timberwolves are on a three-game winning streak, while Denver lost to Dallas on a last-second miss after losing Cam Johnson to a hyperextended knee just 2 days ago. The Nuggets have to regroup and find a way to take advantage of the home court despite missing 3 injured starters – and defending that home court has not been a strength of this squad so far. Can they fend off a hungry Timberwolves team that wants a Christmas Day victory to continue their win streak?
The Basics
Who: Denver Nuggets (21-8) vs Minnesota Timberwolves (20-10)
When: 8:30 PM MT
Where: Ball Arena, Denver CO
How to watch/listen: ABC, ESPN, Radio. Bring a knee brace for Denver’s newest injured starter, Cam Johnson
Rival Blog: Canis Hoopus
Injury Report: Nuggets: Cam Johnson – out (knee hyperextension management), Aaron Gordon – out (hamstring), Christian Braun – out (foot). Timberwolves: Jaden McDaniels – questionable (oblique contusion)
The Three Things
The thing to watch for: Who will have the shortest lulls?
These two squads have had a similar habit this year: getting leads and then squandering them, allowing large runs to chance the course of the game. Denver missing its key defenders is one reason for their lapses – there is no one to get the steal or the stop, to force the miss and secure the rebound. The Timberwolves are a different matter, with some of it due to star Anthony Edwards overcoming a hamstring issue and at other times simply looking like a chemistry problem. That said, these teams are third and fifth in the Western Conference standings, with Denver having 7 wins in its last 10 and Minnesota besting that with 8. Their inconsistencies cost them some games but when everything is firing correctly neither squad is an easy out. The Timberwolves might have lost two games to Denver already but they are one squad that doesn’t fear the Nuggets after their shared history the last couple of years. Which team can keep the rocky stretches to a minimum and focus long enough to get the job done?
The thing to remember: Stars will need to be stars
The two squads have different issues. The Timberwolves can wind up devolving into one-on-one matchups rather than a team game, which hampers their effectiveness. The Nuggets can share the ball almost to a fault. Down three starters, Denver’s two stars in Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray will need to find a way to organize the offense while also having a scoring mentality for themselves. Jokic always makes the right basketball play, to a fault, but sometimes he will need to take on the double team because the guy in the corner is on a two-way contract and playing his third game in 4 days, or the wing who is being screened for missed a couple weeks with a back injury and hasn’t worked the rust off yet.
Denver is not going to have a faultless sense of where to be on offense, when to cut, what passes to make. It will be up to the Jokic-Murray tandem to overcome the chaos and mistakes and gut this game out. Denver’s goal on defense is to make Minnesota take tougher shots, to force them into poor decisions and late-clock passes that can be turned around the other way instead of letting the ball move freely. Ant and Randle can’t have free rein out there. Denver’s goal on offense is to make it rain, and despite Tim Hardaway Jr.’s hot shooting for the Nuggets this year it’s still Jokic and Murray who will have to be the rainmakers.
The thing to bet: Jokic over on points
I expect Nikola to force the action against the Timberwolves. He is going to want to get Gobert and Randle into foul trouble so the Nuggets can get some easier points from the line and in close. Jamal may or may not have to deal with Jaden McDaniels, but Jokic knows what his task is going to be and nobody abuses Gobert like Joker. I expect him to fill the basket up.
