"If we were in Serbia, we'd all get fired," Nikola Jokic said Thursday night, shortly after his Denver Nuggets lost their first-round playoff series in six games to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who were missing their best player, another starter, and also a third guy who had filled in to capably replace the second guy. The Nuggets were down two key players as well, but you cannot construct any excuse for them to have lost this series at all, let alone to have lost it as comprehensively as they did. They won the title three years ago and continue to employ, in the least charitable estimate, the third-best player in the NBA.
For the second time since winning that title, the Nuggets have been booted from the playoffs by a physical Wolves team that exposed their lack of athleticism and supporting talent. This time, Minnesota didn't even need Anthony Edwards, Donte DiVincenzo, or Ayo Dosunmu to finish the job.
Though we are definitely bound for a full offseason of yawping about whether Jokic is good enough to earn all those accolades, and though he did have some stinkers in this series, he was fully MVP-grade in Game 6. What this game exposed instead were the flaws of the remaining Nuggets roster, flaws which were evident throughout a regular season more turbulent than their 54-28 record and No. 3 seed would suggest. Jokic missed 16 games after hyperextending his knee, the longest absence of his injury-resistant career. Even upon his return, he spent long stretches doing grumpy foul-baiting as performance art, and playing defense that would have fit neatly in the fantasies of his worst-faith critics. But he did lock in for the home stretch, and they put together what was somehow the first 10-game win streak during Jokic's Nuggets career, a feat which papered over some earlier dysfunction.
Much of that dysfunction had to do with pesky lower-body injuries at the wing position: Christian Braun, Aaron Gordon, and (a breakout) Peyton Watson. Braun has had no bounce or burst since a November high ankle sprain; Gordon and Watson, who were both sidelined on Thursday night, left Denver without direly needed defense and athleticism. When Gordon and Watson are gone, the Nuggets can be attacked at every position and their help defense is a mess. That softness is what Wolves wing Jaden McDaniels had in mind with his inspired bit of trash talk earlier in this series, and on Thursday he delivered on his promise beyond all expectations. The Nuggets were so hapless, undersized, and old that they had this perimeter defense specialist looking like vintage Kevin Durant en route to 32 points and 10 rebounds. They had Rudy Gobert catching on the short roll, attacking off the dribble and throwing wraparound dimes to the corner three. (He finished with eight assists!) It takes full-on defensive catastrophe for these dudes to look like offensive visionaries.
In theory, the Nuggets should have been able to rely on their offense, top-ranked in the regular season. But on that side, one non-Jokic Nugget showed up, and it was, in a grim twist, Cam Johnson, whose struggles were another major plot thread of the regular season. Beyond Johnson's shot-making, it was Jokic laboring for a good look, refusing to force his own shots, possibly to a fault, as crucial possessions turned to dust, and they got destroyed on the glass, 50-33.
This brings us to the most uncomfortable question for the Nuggets faithful: Can the team afford to play out the rest of Jokic's prime with Jamal Murray as his best teammate? There are few things in the NBA that bring me more pure joy than their two-man game, and we have seen many Nuggets playoff games saved by a spree of unhinged shot-making from Murray, but he was atrocious in Game 6 on both sides of the floor. The length and handsiness of the Wolves defense has rattled him in the past. In this game, they dared him to shoot in the midrange, and he clammed up, passing out of an open shot or blooping a floater off the side of the backboard. Sapped of his characteristic audacity, he submitted the worst playoff performance of his career: 12 points on 4-of-17 shooting. Murray's struggles, along with the wavering health of Gordon, throw the whole theory of this Nuggets roster into uncertainty as they limp off into the bleakest offseason of the Jokic era.
