Every team wants to win the NBA title every year, but sometimes there’s a little extra motivation in play, and it feels like that’s the case for the Nuggets this season. They have many reasons to want to win it all, but a big one is the ability to avenge their painful recent losses in this playoff run.
That starts right off in round one as they’ll play their biggest rivals, and the team that ended their bid to repeat as champs in 2024, the Timberwolves. Minnesota and Denver have developed an excellent rivalry in recent years, started by Tim Connelly jumping ship from the Nuggets to the Wolves and building a team designed to beat them.
They came close in 2023, pushing the Nuggets more than anyone expected, as an 8-seed, then defeated them in a 7-game classic the following season. Now, they’ll meet for a third time in four years, with plenty of familiar faces involved, and hungry to write a new chapter in the history of this matchup.
During Zach Lowe’s live show in Denver with Adam Mares of DNVR, the two discussed the revenge factor, and they mentioned how the Nuggets were extra motivated to beat the Lakers in 2023 to get revenge for the bubble. Denver swept that Western Finals series en route to their title.Â
Nuggets can avenge their last two playoff losses en route to Finals
Now, in the past two years, they’ve been undone in two tight seven-game series’ by the Wolves and Thunder, and they have a chance to amend both of those outcomes.
They know they missed a major opportunity in 2024, falling apart down the stretch at home in game 7, and now it seems like they’re embracing a rematch. They could have easily ducked the Wolves on the final day of the regular season, and while their actions indicated that may be the goal, the players on the court wouldn’t let it happen.
So, the rivalry will be renewed in round one, in what’s easily the most exciting first-round playoff matchup, the only one featuring two actual contenders. If the Nuggets are able to advance, they’ll most likely face a second-round series with the Spurs, another team they had a chance to avoid, in a series that will offer Nikola Jokic a chance to re-establish himself as the premier big man in the league over Victor Wembanyama.
And if they can move through that, it will almost certainly be the defending champs, the Thunder, waiting in the WCF. OKC knocked the Nuggets out last year, so this will be yet another chance for vengeance en route to the Finals. Nothing is set in stone, obviously, but on the surface, it looks like the Nuggets will have a real opportunity to pave an all-time path to the championship that allows them to exorcise all their past demons along the way.
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