After the Minnesota Timberwolves‘ 119-114 win against the Denver Nuggets on Monday, Timberwolves forward Jaden McDaniels roasted Denver’s defense. McDaniels didn’t just take a shot at the Nuggets collectively; he said that the key for Minnesota offensively is to go at their “bad” individual defenders. Then he listed several players by name — Nikola Jokić, Jamal Murray, Tim Hardaway Jr., Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon — and stated that “they’re all bad defenders.”
It is rare to hear a player directly call out a weak link on the opposing team during a playoff series, even if that weak link is being targeted relentlessly. McDaniels, however, clearly doesn’t care about giving the entire Denver team bulletin board material. (I’m also not sure that he cares about accuracy. I wouldn’t call all of those guys bad defenders, and Aaron Gordon in particular is an awesome defender!) Maybe he thinks this is the way to get in the Nuggets’ heads. Maybe he truly thinks they’re all terrible, as he is an excellent defender himself and has extremely high standards. Either way, Denver coach David Adelman doesn’t seem to be taking the comments too seriously.
“I can’t wait for his podcast,” Adelman deadpanned at practice on Wednesday (via ESPN).
In response to a follow-up question about bulletin board material, Adelman said that “we’ve gotten really lazy as a society,” implying that the Nuggets’ defense shouldn’t be a big talking point. He quizzed the assembled media on Denver’s defensive rating through two playoff games (109.6, the sixth-best mark in the playoffs). When a reporter answered correctly, Adelman said, “OK. Next.”
Asked again about McDaniels’ quote, Adelman said: “He’s a really good player. Everybody has a sounding board nowadays. It’ll help his social media.”
Johnson told reporters that the comments can serve as bulletin board material, but said that he’s “not entertaining those antics” (via ESPN).
He added: “They’ve just been saying a lot. All season, all series. So let ’em talk. Let ’em get everything they want off their chest. I’m cool with it.”
Denver’s Christian Braun, meanwhile, told reporters that “you shouldn’t need a fire lit under you in the playoffs,” dismissing the notion that McDaniels’ quote would be a significant source of motivation. He also said he wasn’t surprised by it.
“This is just a part of the rivalry,” Braun said (via ESPN). “I think that’s kind of just part of what comes with it. I don’t think it caught anybody off guard. He’s kind of speaking his truth and what he believes, and we’ll allow them to do that. We kind of want to take care of our own things to make sure we handle our business on our side.”
I’m not sure how much actual basketball analysis this storyline demands, but it’s probably worth noting that the Nuggets finished the regular season ranked No. 21 on defense. Some of that can be chalked up to injuries — Gordon appeared in only 36 games — but having the sixth-best playoff defense through two games hardly proves that Denver has turned into a juggernaut on that end.
In the Game 2 loss that evened the series, the Nuggets struggled specifically against Minnesota’s small lineups: during the 20 minutes that Rudy Gobert was off the court, the Wolves scored an outrageous 142.2 points per 100 possessions. Denver had a tough time getting stops down the stretch, too.
In other words, McDaniels is clearly speaking from his hyperbolic chamber, and the Nuggets are probably right to (mostly) laugh this off. But they definitely have some defensive problems to solve.
