The Minnesota Timberwolves picked up the Game 2 win against the Nuggets in Denver, 119-114. After the game, Jaden McDaniels called out the Nuggets' defense. Not just the team, but some even by name. Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, and more. A look under the hood at some advanced metrics shows he could end up regretting that.
"Go at Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders. Tim Hardaway, Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, their whole team. Go at 'em," Jaden McDaniels said. "They're all bad defenders."
It's certainly bulletin board material. If this doesn't spur the Nuggets to dig deep and find an extra gear, nothing will. But they kind of already have. It's under the radar, but they're playing much better defense through a small sample of two games' worth of data than in the regular season.
The Nuggets defense is better than McDaniels thinks
We all know the Nuggets' defense has its moments. They held the second-ranked offense, the Boston Celtics, to just 84 points in late February. They also allowed 84 points in the paint to the tanking Utah Jazz.
Game 2 resembled a game closer to the layup line against the Jazz at times, but it wasn't really that bad. Through two games, most of the guys McDaniels called out have actually improved upon their regular-season numbers in the defensive rating metric.
The lower the number, the better, and Tim Hardaway Jr. tops the list at 100.0. His regular-season number was 114.9.
Aaron Gordon follows in the playoff defensive rating at 104.8, against 112.0. Nikola Jokic, 105.1 against 115.3. And Jamal Murray, 106.8 against 117.7. The only player McDaniels called out directly that didn't greatly improve is Cam Johnson, who has a 116.5 against a 114.7.
The Nuggets are mostly playing better defense. Mostly. Spencer Jones is the bottom Nugget at 135.9, and Jonas Valanciunas sports a 123.8. The Nuggets just don't have an answer for taking Jokic out of the game defensively, and the non-Jokic minutes have been where leads go to collapse a lot this season.
The Nuggets can make McDaniels eat his words
The problem isn't the defense. The defensive rating the Nuggets are sporting across two games is fine. The problem is that the Nuggets' offense went stagnant.
Jokic only has an offensive rating of 110.2 against a 126.1 in the regular season. That's a problem. You can imagine that everyone else's is lower, too. And the pace is actually up for the Nuggets. Jokic had a 102.59 pace in the regular season, and that's up to 104.83 through two games.
The Timberwolves outshot the Nuggets percentage-wise in both games, including from three. The Nuggets were the best three-point shooting team in the NBA at 39.6% on the season. They're just 32.5% through two games.
Jokic and Murray also combined for just 4 fourth-quarter points. That's probably not going to happen again. The offense was too potent in the regular season to sit dormant too long.
Both games were close. The remaining games probably will be, too. These two teams are built for each other. It's far from over. And the Nuggets still have plenty of time to make Jaden McDaniels regret calling them out.