It is Cancun time for the Denver Nuggets, as their run as NBA champions came to an abrupt end on Sunday following a crushing 98-90 home loss in Game 7 of their second-round series against Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Denver entered the series finale as the understandable favorite, considering the location of the game among other reasons. But when it was all said and done on the court between these teams, it's the Timberwolves who are moving on to the Western Conference Finals while Denver is now left scratching its head and asking itself how did it all end so painfully.
Nuggets fans who witnessed the game live at Ball Arena in Mile High City were all left stunned by the Game 7 result. It looked as though Denver was going to take care of business in the second round after a shaky start when the Nuggets took a 3-2 lead in the series. But the Timberwolves responded with back-to-back wins while the threat of elimination stared directly at them.
With all that said, here are some of the takeaways about what led to the Nuggets' downfall in a shocking Game 7 duel against Minnesota.
Second half meltdown
Denver had a fantastic start in Game 7. The Nuggets even took a 15-point lead into halftime. Jamal Murray carried most of the load for his team in the first half with 24 points on 8-of-15 shooting from the field, while Nikola Jokic added 13 points on 6-of-12 shooting before halftime. It even got to a point that Charles Barkley openly advocated for the the Timberwolves to stop using Rudy Gobert, with Jokic dominating the individual matchup through the first two periods of Game 7.
The story flipped in the second half, though. The Nuggets got massively outscored by the Timberwolves in the final two quarters to the tune of a 60-37 differential. Minnesota shot 46.3 percent from the field after halftime, which wasn't all that impressive unless it gets compared to the Nuggets' horrible 35.9 field goal percentage during the same stretch.
The Nuggets got nothing from the supporting cast
A big reason for the Nuggets' cold second half was the lack of support provided by the team behind Jokic and Murray. Overall in the game, Denver's star duo combined for 69 points, which means the rest of the Nuggets racked up just 21 points. Aaron Gordon spent 42 minutes on the floor but mustered only four points. Michael Porter Jr. went 3-of-12 from the field for seven points. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Christian Braun scored the other remaining 10 points in the equation. It was simply a brutal night for Nuggets players not named Nikola Jokic or Jamal Murray.
Minnesota's defense made life hard for the Nuggets, but Gordon and the rest of Denver's supporting cast could and should have done so much better than what it showed in Game 7.
Denver forgot how to make 3-pointers
When the Nuggets won three games in a row in the series to take a 3-2 lead over the Timberwolves, Denver shot a torrid 46.6 percent from behind the arc. Their outside shooting was instrumental in the success they had in that stretch. However, Denver failed to sustain that form from deep. In Game 6, they shot just 7-of-36 from the 3-point region. If the Nuggets thought they were going to recapture their outside touch at home in Game 7, they certainly got it wrong because Denver converted only eight of their 33 3-point attempts on Sunday. Somehow, the Nuggets shot worse from that region than Minnesota, which was just 10-of-34 on its threes in the series finale.
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