The Nuggets Lose Game 4 In Embarassing Fashion

There’s no other way to put it. This Nuggets team is still shook from what happened in Game Two. This team has been unrecognizable since then.

Denver looked like they were past the Minnesota demons. They won three of the four games in the regular season and won Game One semi convincingly. The Nuggets then came out firing on all cylinders in Game Two, and it looked like they were clearly the better team.

Denver won the first quarter of Game Two 39-25. The lead ballooned to 44-25 early in the second, but it quickly went away by halftime. It felt like, at that moment, the Nuggets ran out of answers.

Minnesota ended up winning the game in a back-and-forth fourth quarter, 119-114. They overcame their second-greatest deficit in playoff franchise history. Their highest was that 20-point comeback in Game Seven against Denver in 2024.

It felt like the Nuggets players lost their composure from that comeback and never recovered. In the two games in Minnesota, Denver scored 96 points. That is unfathomable for a team that scored 122 points per game in the regular season. With the season on the line, the offense crumbled.

The Nuggets, according to some next-gen stats, are shooting 8/36 on open shots, which ranks 15th out of the 16 playoff teams. They are also 20/57, which ranks 10th in the postseason. In the regular season, they were ranked number one and two in those categories, respectively.

That is no longer bad luck. That means the Timberwolves are clearly in the Nuggets’ heads, and the only way out of it is to finally hit some shots.

Ayo Dosunmu’s Legacy Moment

First of all, players up for Dante Divincenzo, who tore his Achilles tendon in the opening minutes of this game. It’s now been back-to-back postseasons where the league has lost players to this injury, which is hard to watch.

It felt like a disaster was piling up when Anthony Edwards went down on one leg and his knee buckled. It looked like ACL was a possibility. Fortunately, there was no ligament damage, and he is out for a few weeks.

That means Edwards will miss the rest of this series and most of round two, assuming they advance. It was good to see he avoided serious structural damage and will be back 100% healty for the 2026 season.

Even with those two injuries, the Timberwolves still punked the Nuggets by double figures. The story of the game was Ayo Dosunmu. He finished the game with 43 points on 13/17 shooting and went 5/5 from three. With the rest of the team struggling, he had to carry the load and found the perfect opportunity to have his best game.

The Wolves have no fear going into Denver for Game Five. They believe their current roster is more than capable of finishing off Nikola Jokic and company in five games.

David Adelman Is Coaching For His Job

If the Nuggets end up losing in this round, David Adelman is certainly not going to be the head coach next year. Whether it is fair or not, that is the harsh reality. On paper, this roster is more talented than the 2023 championship team.

The bench has big names, and Jamal Murray is playing the best ball of his career. So why is the team struggling to win games in this postseason? The answer is simple: defense.

More than technique, desire, and the want to drive great defenses. This team has none of this. The Nuggets had a chance to lock in on defense after Jaden McDaniels called them out by name.

Instead, Denver came out and allowed 113 and 112 points in the games since. McDaniels broke the unwritten rule of scoring a layup at the end of the game, then Jokic decided to confront him.

Why did the fight only come out then? Where was this when the game mattered? Jokic is an all-time great and will go down as one of the 20 greatest players of all time, but that was an embarrassing moment for him.

Teams whose defense is lacking consistently mean they’ve tuned out the head coach. Unfortunately for Adelman, it looks like that is what’s happening.

In addition to the poor defense, Adelman refuses to play certain bench players. Playing Jonas Valanciunas for zero minutes is unacceptable. Nuggets nation has been longing for a backup center for Jokic, and now that he’s here, he’s not being utilized at all.

Players such as Jalen Pickett and Julian Strawther were integral parts when the injury bug was prominent. Why not give a chance to those guys? At what point will DaRon Holmes II get an opportunity?

Denver needs to see what they have in these young players, but Adelman is reluctant to take these risks. That will cost him his job.

End Of My Denver Nuggets Rant

The team is a mess right now. Denver has no belief in these games, Jokic continues to struggle, and the defense lets Dosunmu go nuclear. This may be the biggest letdown in the Jokic era, and it’s not particularly close.

The team is also unclear about Aaron Gordon’s status for Game Five. After giving it a go in Game Four with calf tightness, he left the game midway through the third quarter and briefly returned. He’s clearly not 100%.

All hope seems lost. The only silver lining is that the Nuggets are no strangers to coming back from 3-1. They did twice in the bubble, and both those series looked equally as hopeless after Game Four.

The team, though, did end up rallying. Can they do the same? That will say a lot about Adleman’s job security for next year.

Onto Game Five.