The first round of this year’s NBA postseason has blessed the NBA with another chapter in the Nuggets-Timberwolves rivalry. But it’s not going the way anybody thought it would.
Prior to Game 1, Denver was widely viewed as the favorite, which lines up—Nikola Jokić’s squad is the higher seed with 54 wins to Minnesota’s 49, features an MVP finalist and is made up of largely the same roster that came within one game of upsetting the Thunder last year. The T-wolves hit the postseason after a shaky stretch to end the season with injury questions surrounding Anthony Edwards and even more pressing questions about their identity as a team. There were a lot of reasons to believe in the Nuggets even in light of their shaky defense and recurring soft tissue injuries plauging the rotation even into the postseason.
