It’s often said that the Minnesota Timberwolves were built to beat the Denver Nuggets.
Nuggets president of basketball operations Tim Connelly left to become the president of basketball operations for the Timberwolves in 2022, and Minnesota pulled off what was considered impossible at the time. The then-reigning champion Nuggets were a freight train until the Timberwolves took them out in the 2024 Western Conference semifinals.
The Timberwolves have reached the past two Western Conference Finals series, and if they’re going to make it three, they’ll have to get past the Nuggets in the first round of the 2026 NBA playoffs.
The third-seeded Nuggets beat the sixth-seeded Timberwolves 116-105 in Game 1 on Saturday afternoon, and Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch felt the officials were a little too involved in his team going down 1-0.
During his postgame press conference, Finch was asked what the Timberwolves will need to do defensively to get the best of Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets in the series.
“Well, I mean, the 16 free throws from [Jamal] Murray is a head-scratcher,” Finch said.
When another reporter pointed out that the Nuggets took 33 free throws compared to Minnesota’s 19, Finch elaborated.
“I thought we played really good defense on [Murray],” he said. “A lot of those ones in the second quarter, we were there. We were physical. We were vertical. He initiates the contact. He spills away, and then he gets rewarded for it. Jokic does the same thing. We’ve gotta be solid around that. But 16 free throws is a lot. It’s almost as many as we shot all game.”
Murray made all 16 of his free throws and finished with a game-high 30 points, even though he went 0-for-8 from three and 7-of-22 from the floor. Jokic did what Jokic does: 25 points, 13 rebounds, and 11 assists — and that’s with Rudy Gobert defending him well.
Minnesota will have its chance to even the series when Game 2 tips off at Denver’s Ball Arena on Monday night.
Read the full article here
