Minnesota Sports Forum

In the third quarter, the fouls were flying. Jokic drew his 4th and had to sit down. He was incredibly productive in the few minutes he was on the court though. Not just in terms of points and assists (his +/- for this game must have been insane--every time he's in Denver goes on a run and every time he sits we do), but he's also been amazing and getting our guys in foul trouble. Naz made some really nice plays, but got into foul trouble guarding Jokic. After going with Garza in the first half, Finch went with Nate in the second, and Nate literally picked up 4 fouls while guarding Jokic in like, 5 minutes. Insane. Garza back. He played pretty well actually.

Nowell seems jealous because he literally picked up 4 or maybe even 5 fouls in this quarter alone!

McDaniels playing really well on both ends. *sigh* I'd feel so much better going into this series if we had him.

Murray running the PNR with Concar really well actually. I forgot how good he can be as a distributor. He's also dropped like, 12 points in this quarter.

DLO hit a couple shots, and then late in the quarter pulled off one of the all-time obvious flops--and gets 2 FTs for it.

Ant attacking the rim pretty well.

Just realized no JMAC in this game. We were basically going without a PG for a pretty long stretch in the first half. DLO has played this whole quarter it looks like.

OK, though 3 quarters, Denver is +10 with Jokic, -17 without him. Nuts!

Jokic back to start the 4th. Back and back threes to start, including from Gordon, whose shot has looked decent in this game.

Prince with a couple nice buckets to keep the lead at 6 then picks up a steal.

Garza misses a couple 3s, then picks up ANOTHER foul on Jokic. Jokic is sort of semi-flopping. Hopefully they don't call that stuff in the playoffs, but he's really been able to bait our bigs into fouls all over the place.

Naz with a nice block on Jokic. I think we're really gonna miss having him as a backup big.

Jokic with a great full-court pass to draw the foul on the layup attempt. Naz has 5 fouls now. Man, we need to be careful not to get KAT and Rudy in foul trouble against this team. I can see that as a real danger here.

They flashed the standings just now. The Pelicans were in 3rd or 4th and the Suns in 12th. Everybody else was about where they ended up. Interesting.

Ant settling for some tough 3s. Need to cut that out of his diet.

Moore with more minutes here.

Key play with 7:17 to go. Jokic has scored in the paint on multiple trips (Naz just went to the bench with his 5th) so we bring the double team as he backs Garza down in the paint. Anderson was guarding Gordon in the dunker's spot, Prince was theoretically guarding KCP in the corner but as Jokic backed down Garza, Prince came over to cover Gordon and directed SloMo to double Jokic. At this point, Ant and Moore are both sagging way off their guys to help against Jokic too. Jokic was basically drawing 4 defenders! He literally has 3 guys wide open on the 3 point line. As he pivots into the pant at the restricted line and sees SloMo double him he whips it to KCP in the corner, Prince makes a decent effort to close out, but it's an open 3 and boom, he hits it. That right there in a nutshell is what makes this team so tough. Ant and Moore probably sagged a bit too much, but if you're going to double Jokic, that's what he'll do to you anyway. Jaden's length instead of Prince's might have made that a tougher shot, but it was still a good look. Ideally, Rudy will do well enough on Jokic (without drawing fouls) that we don't need to double. If we do double him, we need to be flawless about it or he'll punish us by hitting open 3 point shooters.

Garza's doing a decent job offensively. 13 points. Shame we can't play him as a backup big. Man, another 3! Garza playing great!

Ant good D on Bones. Anderson really is our PG here.

Brown could give us some problems. He's relentless. Dude is scoring on the break, cutting in the half court, and hitting 3s. We need to be careful not to let him beat us.

Ant hitting some really tough shots at the rim.

Jokic just pushes SloMo out of the way and scores a hook in the paint. I suggested maybe SloMo could handle him in this upcoming series. Now I'm not sure.

Naz back in and looking good. Man, we're going to miss him.

Ant drives, dishes, ball swings and leads to a DLO 3. We're hanging on to a 5 point lead. Murray and Jokic really hurting us. Jokic to the line again.

Murray hits a 3 to tie it at 2 minutes after Jaden airmailed a 3. Seemingly the first real mistake he made in this game.

Naz throws it away to SloMo on a backdoor cut. Ant not really demanding the ball, as Doris points out.

Jokic picks up his 5th on a moving pick.

Frantic offensive possession leads to a desperate DLO 3 from the corner that hits the side of the backboard. Murray responds by calmly hitting the floater over McD and giving Denver the lead. We haven't scored in a couple minutes.

Watching this, our old problem of our offense just breaking down when it matters down the stretch is glaringly apparent. Just ugly offense as we choke away a lead.

DLO feels pressure and throws a soft pass at SloMo that goes out of bounds but they call it tipped so we keep the ball--lucky they didn't have a challenge, that looked like a turnover.

Denver gets the ball with 2 minutes left and 35 second. Jokic has SloMo on him, gets the switch for Jaden at the top of the key, dribbles by Jaden and past SloMo, Naz comes to help which leaves Gordon open in the dunker's spot, Jokic shovels it to Gordon who is wide open for the dunk. Nuggs by 4 with 14 seconds.

Ant heaves a desperation 3 from the top of the key that bricks, got his own rebound, Naz misses a 3, Ant misses a outback, then Jokic gets the rebound and that's the game. Nuggets by 4. Close the game on a 9-0 run. Jokic with the triple double, 31, 11, and 13 on 20 shots in just 31 minutes due to foul trouble. Our offense seizing up down the stretch was so brutal to watch. Just seen it too many times this year. Balanced effort from the Wolves. Nobody really stood out in a completely positive or negative way (though Jaden looked really good). A bit of a disappointment from Ant with the scoring, but he was definitely active in other areas. Reminded me of the game against OKC the other day.

Add KAT and Rudy instead of Naz and Jaden (and Garza) and hopefully we can do better than that in this upcoming series.

Wow, quite the scouting report there Drew. The playoffs will be a different kind of matchup for sure.

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 6:28 pm Wow, quite the scouting report there Drew. The playoffs will be a different kind of matchup for sure.

Yes, true, especially with Rudy and KAT and Conley/NAW instead of DLO. Though I just finished watching last night (yeesh, that was painful) and one of the things that stuck out to me that I was noticing in these earlier games was how our guys absolutely have to stick to their man on defense. There was way too much soft help coming towards Jokic and he was killing us on that by swinging it to the open man, and that was something I saw in those early games too. Especially with Rudy on Jokic now. The best way to help him is not to drift toward Jokic to flail at the ball but stick like glue to your guy to make it harder for Jokic to find a pass.

Also, I was not surprised Bruce Brown hurt us like that. He was kind of doing the same to us during the year.

Murray looked really good last night. Better than during those games against us earlier in the season.

SameOldNudityDrew wrote: ↑Mon Apr 17, 2023 3:17 pm

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 6:28 pm Wow, quite the scouting report there Drew. The playoffs will be a different kind of matchup for sure.

Yes, true, especially with Rudy and KAT and Conley/NAW instead of DLO. Though I just finished watching last night (yeesh, that was painful) and one of the things that stuck out to me that I was noticing in these earlier games was how our guys absolutely have to stick to their man on defense. There was way too much soft help coming towards Jokic and he was killing us on that by swinging it to the open man, and that was something I saw in those early games too. Especially with Rudy on Jokic now. The best way to help him is not to drift toward Jokic to flail at the ball but stick like glue to your guy to make it harder for Jokic to find a pass.

Also, I was not surprised Bruce Brown hurt us like that. He was kind of doing the same to us during the year.

Murray looked really good last night. Better than during those games against us earlier in the season.

Yeah, I was confused when the TNT crew (was it Greg Anthony doing color?) kept saying you can't let Jokic just take guys on in single coverage, as he scored a few buckets early from the post with KAT or SloMo guarding him.

Well, what the hell else are we supposed to do? He's probably the greatest passing big man in history. Doubling him means someone is getting a layup or a wide open 3. I'd rather see him tire himself out operating in the post one on one, even if we do give up 40+ to him.

So yeah, I think the strategy is to try to make Jokic a scorer and take everyone else out of their game, then also attack him on offense and may be eventually he gets worn down a bit.