Anthony Edwards And The Timberwolves Made One Hell Of An Opening Statement By Going Into Denver And Taking Game 1
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Heading into MIN/DEN, many considered this matchup to be the defacto Western Conference Finals despite it taking place in the second round, and after Game 1 I think we all have an idea as to why. Holy shit what an incredible opener to what should be a wildly entertaining series, and what an opening statement by Anthony Edwards & Co.
Going on the road and stealing Game 1 the way they did to take an early control of the series and steal homecourt against the defending champs is about as big of a playoff as you're going to get at this point in the postseason. For those that maybe didn't watch a whole lot of Wolves basketball this year, maybe you're surprised by today's outcome. But if you've been watching them all year, this is what they do and how they play. Tough as nails to score on, great size and length, an unstoppable force in Anthony Edwards who is repeatedly showing us the ability to rise to the occasion and be the best player on the floor, even when that means sharing the floor with Nikola Jokic.
Can I just say, the tech he was given for staring at Reggie Jackson after he bullied him to the rim and finished over him was absolutely pathetic. Whoever the ref was that called that tech needs to be banned from the rest of the playoffs. What are we doing? We're STILL giving techs for showing emotion in the NBA playoffs. Think about that for a second. Adam Silver grow the fuck up and do something about this already.
Anyway, it's important to remember that during the year the Wolves were 2-2 against DEN and very easily could have been 3-1, so it's not as if something like this wasn't possible, in fact you could make the case that it's not even surprising given how the Wolves have looked since the playoffs started. They've been playing as well as any team on the planet led by that guy above, and the beauty of these playoffs is you never know when someone is going to show up with the performance of a lifetime to help you steal a game.
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Today, that guy was Naz Reid in the 4th quarter
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14 point in the 4th quarter, Naz Reid completely took over for a stretch and that was all the help Ant needed. When you get into a close game in the 4th quarter against the Nuggets, your execution has to be perfect. When you have your chances to bury them, you cannot blow it, you have to step on necks and bury them. So when that time came for Ant, guess what he did?
The Wolves seemed to have figured something out with the double big closing lineups, especially when it comes to eliminating the Aaron Gordon safety valve alley-oop that Jokic always seems to look for late in games. We saw Gobert break it up late, and that's going to have to be something the Nuggets adjust for in Game 2. Putting McDaniels on Murray to start the game is also something the Nuggets need to figure out, because his length gave Murray all sorts of problems early, and as we just saw, the Wolves are not the Lakers. This team is actually good, so getting nothing from Jamal Murray for an entire half isn't going to cut it either.
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The goal of this trip was obviously to just find a way to split, but now taking Game 1 changes the dynamic of the series. Game 2 may as well be as close to a must win as you can get for the Nuggets, because these Wolves are no joke in their own building (30-11). You also don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're going to need the Wolves to lose 3 in a row, because that hasn't happened all year. Not a single time.
Heading to MIN down 0-2 would certainly be less than ideal, so now we're going to see what the defending champs look like now that they are finally facing some adversity. They haven't trailed in a playoff series in 2 years, but now they just got punched in the mouth by a team that doesn't look afraid of the moment.
All I know is I need 7 games of this series. We've only had one Game 7 so far in these playoffs and that is not nearly enough. Given how awesome this series looks like it's going to be, I think we all can agree we need 6 more.