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Minnesota, which has won three of its first four games, is
coming off a 113-108 win on the road against the defending
champion Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday. D'Angelo Russell scored
29 points and dished six assists, and Karl-Anthony Towns scored
25 points on 9-for-13 shooting.
"That's an NBA championship opponent," Timberwolves coach Chris
Finch said. "I know they've got some injuries and whatnot, but
they play hard and they don't beat themselves. We had to do a
good job of executing our game plan."
Now, the challenge for Minnesota is to avoid a letdown
performance following the emotional win.
The Nuggets come to town on short rest after a dominant 106-75
win at home against the Dallas Mavericks on Friday night. Denver
jumped to a 54-44 halftime lead and put the game away with a
runaway third quarter, outscoring Dallas 33-12.
Nikola Jokic scored 11 points and pulled down 16 rebounds
despite playing with a sore right knee. He injured the knee on
Wednesday when he collided with Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert in
the first half.
Nuggets coach Michael Malone said it was important to be
cautious when considering Jokic's workload. It remains to be
seen whether his playing time will be limited in the second half
of a back-to-back set.
"He's far too important for this team for us to risk him being
out there if he's not feeling confident about it," said Malone,
who limited Jokic's playing time to 25 minutes on Friday.
Will Barton also will try to stay hot for Denver after scoring
17 points on 7-for-12 shooting one night earlier. He added six
assists to go along with five rebounds.
Meanwhile, Minnesota will continue to rely upon its top three
players in Towns, Russell and second-year guard Anthony Edwards.
All three are averaging at least 18 points per game this season,
while no other player on the team is scoring in double digits.
Towns leads the Timberwolves with 28 points and 7.8 rebounds per
game in his first four contests. Towns also is averaging four
assists, 2.5 blocks and 1.3 steals in his seventh NBA season.
"Karl's the best player on our team," Russell said. "When he's
aggressive as heck to start the game, we feed off that. If he's
a little passive to start the game, we feed off that as well. We
kind of play off him.
"Right now, we're trying to figure that out, how we can still be
assertive and still be there and not be invisible when we're
feeding off him."
The Nuggets went 3-0 against the Timberwolves last season.
Denver won 124-109 at home, 123-116 on the road and 114-103 at
home for a clean sweep of the regular-season series. In the
final win May 13, Jokic finished with 31 points on 14-for-21
shooting to go along with a team-high 14 rebounds.
--Field Level Media
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