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shrink wrote:I always thought it’s Minny [who matches up best against DEN - sic] because they are best at negating the things at negating DEN’s match up advantages.

MIN plays Towns on Jokic. Nobody stops Jokic, but Towns length helps reduce his passing ability, and makes Jokic more of a scorer. That allows Gobert to protect the paint while he guards Aaron Gordon. For most teams, that means if they use their PF and C this way, Porter has a big size advantage on his defender. The Wolves though are loaded with quality players 6-9 or taller, with Jaden McDaniels, Naz, and Kyle Anderson. In fact, MIN likely has the size advantage in the match up, because DEN’s bench bigs aren’t as deep as MIN.

Next, Jamal Murray is an under-rated player finally getting his due, and a lot of that credit goes to receiving great passes from Jokic. But MIN is showing that with defenders like McDaniels and Ant (and Nickiel Alexander-Walker), they can really limit perimeter scorers, like Devin Booker.

On the other hand, how does DEN handle Ant? They don’t have Brown this year, and the only player that could maybe defend him is Gordon. However, Gordon is the ONLY option they have to defend Towns size and scoring ability. Towns shoots over smaller guys, and drive past bigger, slower defenders.

I’m not saying MIN is better than DEN, and they should be favored. I am saying that MIN’s team composition (both built by Tim Connelly) create a lot of match up issues for the Nuggets. I wonder if Connelly realized that for the MIN to have high level success, he needed to build a team that could match up with with DEN, and that influenced him to pay such a high price to acquire Gobert?

Showdown wrote:Gobert is not that good on 1 on 1 defense and that make them worse against Nuggets because Nuggets game includes Jokić in every play and Edwards is only guy that can invent basket when their gameplan colapse and he need to go wild like in the previous PO series against Nuggets for them to have the chance(KAT have talent to do so but he didn't show he can do it in PO so far) and Reid and NAW could easily be made irelevant by different schemes. Suns were the team that Nuggets players feared the most so Minnesota is doing them a favor by moving them from their road to the finals.

Ridicululz wrote:Murray needs to step up. He's had some great clutch moments, but he needs to be more consistent if they want to beat the Wolves

GSP wrote:Wolves will beat Denver if Denver doesnt choke the 3-0 lead which is possible Tbh

They were up 3-0 on Wolves last year and were a possession away from going game 6. Won game 5 by 3pts.

Denver lost alot of depth w.o Bruce Brown and Jeff Green. They got 5 from their bench tonight and they have one of the worst benches in the league in general.

Also last series last year that was a hair from going 6................Wolves didnt have Naz Reid OR Jaden Mcdaniels. Thats 2 of their top 5 players. Murray isnt gonna have the series he had last year w/ Jaden back guarding him. And thats just obvious much more depth for em. And Denver had everyone last year and couldnt guard Ant at all itd be no different this time around.

Wolves in 6 if it happens but dont count out La

shrink wrote:Besides the factors you mentioned, MIN has a big advantage in depth, with quality players in Naz Reid, Nickiel Alexander-Walker and Kyle Anderson.