Denver’s defense will make or break this Nuggets playoff run

DENVER—The Denver Nuggets have been thoroughly impressive through two games in their first-round playoff matchup with the Minnesota Timberwolves, winning seven of the eight quarters.

A large chunk of Denver’s dominance has been because of defense. Specifically how the team has stifled T-Wolves star Karl-Anthony Towns to just 21 points total through two games tells a large part of the story. Still, 59 points in the series from Anthony Edwards and a 40-point third quarter in Game 2 that upset the apple cart was concerning.

All of this is to say that defense wins championships—it really does—and it’s going to be what makes or breaks the Nuggets over their playoff run.

So let’s look at a few standout plays from Game 2, go over a couple of stats and try to figure out what it all means for Michael Malone’s unit.

Tape: Towns four first-half turnovers

Aaron Gordon walls off KAT and forces his low-block post up onto the elbow. When Towns aggressively backs down AG, the Nuggets forward barely budges. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who has been awesome in the series comes toward Towns to dig at his post-up. With the clock ticking down KCP’s dig turns into a double. This forces Jamal Murray to mind Edwards, while matched up with Taurean Prince. As KCP commits to the double team Prince cuts forcing the Nuggets defense into action. Murray spurs up to Edwards, Bruce Brown shrinks the floor and puts himself in position to get out to Mike Conley or help with Rudy Gobert. Nikola Jokic jumps off Gobert to pick up the Prince cut. While Brown and Jokic are handling the backside three on two, KAT’s forced into a pickup by the aggressive KCP and Murray’s immaculate rotation turns into a steal and a runout dunk.

“Making it tough on him, showing a crowd on every drive. Closing out on his threes, you know, just just not letting him play comfortable,” Murray said of how the Nuggets are defending Towns. “Man it has been working for us and we know he’s gonna adjust, he’s a good player and he’s gonna have a good game one of these games, he’s gonna come out there and do what he does. So we just got to be prepared for that and stay on him not try to foul him or let him get to the free-throw line. We just need to make it tough on him. I think Aaron is doing a good job not worrying about his fouls, just limiting possessions. It’s been a great defensive series so far.”

Murray is right and what’s interesting is that Towns primary matchup in the series has been Gordon. AG has spent much of the series in foul trouble, limited to 23 minutes in Game 1 and playing with five fouls in Game 2. What Murray also said is that Jeff Green has done a good job on KAT. In five minutes matched up with KAT, Green hasn’t allowed the big man to score. And in Game 2 Green forced him into two charging fouls.

Towns only scored 20.8 points per game during his limited 29-game season. More like 25 points per game in a normal season, the sweet-shooting center put it in at a 50% FG/37% 3FG/87% FT rate. Yes, he’s shelled up in the playoffs in the past. Last season his erratic series against Memphis saw him turn the ball over 4.5 times per game but he still shot 46% from deep and tallied 22 a game in the six-game series. In two games against the Nuggets, he’s at 10.5 a game with nine turnovers, while shooting an atrocious 8-for-27 from the field, 3-for-12 from deep and 2-of-4 at the line. Yes KAT has shriveled but the Nuggets defense on him has been insane.

Stat: Lineups

The Nuggets finished with the fifth-best offense by rating and the fiftieth-best defense. Every championship-winning team for the last 42 years has ranked top 10 in defense, with only two outliers, the 2018 Warriors who were 11th and the league’s third-best offense, and the 2001 Lakers, who were 21st and had the league’s second-best offense. In the clutch this season Denver’s defense was third-best in the league and through two games of the playoffs, their defense has been fourth-best thus far.

Diving in deeper, the Nuggets four-man lineup of Jokic, Gordon, Brown, KCP and Christian Braun was the fourth-best five-man defensive lineup in the NBA this season who played more than 50 minutes together. And swapping out Braun for Michael Porter Jr. still keeps the five-man unit in the league’s top 20.

So we know that the Nuggets have the ability to be great on defense. And as sports become more specialized in every which way, can defensive groupings in an NBA game be part of that?

Over 10 minutes of playoff action the Nuggets have broken out to a group of Gordon, Green, KCP, Brown and MPJ. That never used unit during the regular season has been third-best-rated five-man group in a very limited time. But what this shows more is creativity from Malone to try new lineups. There was a somewhat significant stretch where the team played without a real guard, going Brown, Braun, KCP, Green and Gordon.

Breaking

But what the Nuggets defense through first five quarters of  the series, stifling them under 23 in each period, ballooned to 40 in the third quarter of Game 2. KAT has eight of his 10 in the 12 minutes and Edwards cashed in 13 of his 41. The T-Wolves really ran, scoring 11 points on the fastbreak, which led to 21 points in the paint

“He’s a good player, we’re not going to hold guys scoreless every night, I hate to break it to you guys,” Malone said. “They got it going in transition. It was just Edwards putting his head down, attacking the basket. That team needs to score in transition and we need to take that away.”

Malone said the Nuggets played zero defense in the period and then proved it to be true by holding Minny to 24 when turning it back on for the fourth quarter.

What is a longer term concern is the defensive disappearance. Part of this was a spiral over of the Nuggets not making shots, another was Edwards absurd shot-making but Jokic’s half-hearted contests that get roasted on the internet were around and so were blow by after blow by and none of those good rotations we saw earlier.

Braun only played three minutes and Denver didn’t deepen their bench past eight. After talking about it in the regular season then using DeAndre Jordan as such, Malone compared his deeper bench to baseball bullpen with guys that could be in depending on the matchup. Was the third quarter maybe a missed opportunity for one of those experimentation or could Malone be saving a few things for deeper in the playoffs?