As long as Nikola Jokic is in his prime and healthy, the Denver Nuggets will likely always be considered one of the NBA’s premier championship contenders.
But winning a title in the NBA is often about ideal matchups. Every team — and this is without exception — has its fatal flaw, an unavoidable kryptonite. A superstar like Jokic is transcendent, but he and his Nuggets teammates are not unbeatable.
After the Minnesota Timberwolves dealt away perennial All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks on Friday night, my first thought went to the status of Jokic and the Nuggets. This is not because Minnesota, Anthony Edwards, and Towns ended the Nuggets’ 2024 season in a dramatic Game 7 in May, but precisely because Towns’ absence means the Timberwolves no longer have the ultimate trump card to overcome Denver’s three-time MVP in a heated postseason setting.
The dreaded, infamous two-big lineup.
Karl-Anthony Towns was the primary defender on Kevin Durant and Nikola Jokic in back-to-back series, credibly guarding Hall of Famers with vastly different skills while also averaging 19 points on 52/44/83 shooting.
And he put the nail in Denver's coffin: pic.twitter.com/ApVwma4ILo
— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) May 20, 2024
With everyone healthy and at their best, Jokic’s Nuggets two most notable playoff losses have come at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers during the 2020 Western Conference Finals and to last year’s Timberwolves in the second round.
How both teams primarily beat Denver is no coincidence.
In 2020, the Lakers used a rotation of three bigs featuring Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard, and JaVale McGee to overwhelm Jokic. Jokic is arguably the most skilled center in the league — especially thanks to his all-time floater game. He is a one-man matchup problem who can score at will against sizable NBA defense in isolation or the post as he pleases. However, the Lakers ensured that they always had someone with size and athleticism fronting Jokic while the other forward roamed as a low-man backup in case the initial line of defense was lost.
With an exhausted Jokic still maturing as an All-NBA-caliber player, the Lakers cruised to a five-game series win. Though, Davis had his remarkable individual moments on offense, too:
The two-big lineup is not an unbeatable coverage for Jokic, per se, who has shown he can find a way to the rim and get a quality shot off anyway. But that requires the Serbian star to use a lot more of his energy. This sort of mix wears him down over time. When Jokic is tired and gassed, he’s eventually no longer working tirelessly for quality shots, he’s settling for random 3-pointers, and he’s often even failing to swallow a litany of defensive rebounds his reputation is centered around.
The Nuggets, in effect, are a shell of themselves with Jokic in this state.
The Timberwolves had a near-carbon copy of this equation to defend Jokic. They could use Towns or power forward Naz Reid to front him while four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert roamed, waiting to send over his help defense or to block the shot. To his credit, Jokic still found ways to make an impact against this defensive coverage — his masterful 40-point, 13-assist, seven-rebound effort in Game 5 of the series comes to mind — but again, that takes a lot out of him. And Towns certainly seemed like he challenged Jokic the most of all three defenders.
There’s also a reason the Timberwolves don’t usually prefer putting Gobert on Jokic in single coverage because this is what happens:
By his high standards, after having to metaphorically break his back against Towns, Gobert, and Reid all series, Jokic almost appeared ephemeral in stunning back-to-back losses in Game 6 and 7. It’s because the Timberwolves had the perfect defensive coverage to combat his skill. With all due respect to Julius Randle, he is not nearly the same kind of defender as Towns, let alone as talented.
And if the Timberwolves want to use more of Reid against Jokic while Gobert roams, well, I’ll let the screenshot below from their most recent playoff battle tell the story about how that would likely go:
Naz Reid is getting that Anthony Davis look facing Jokic. pic.twitter.com/Zc91wmkZHp
— Gordon Gross (@GMoneyNuggs) May 13, 2024
With Towns out of the picture now, Minnesota got a lot worse against Denver, specifically, as a result.
None of this is to say that the Nuggets’ path through the Western Conference to another NBA championship this season has parted like the Red Sea. The West remains a daunting gauntlet, with juggernaut contenders like the Oklahoma City Thunder, Dallas Mavericks, and yes, even the Timberwolves without Towns, still standing in Denver’s way, among others.
But if you’re Denver, you likely always feel great about your chances in any playoff series the easier Jokic has it. The looser his individual matchups are, the more likely it is the Nuggets will find a way to beat you in a back-and-forth best-of-seven. I would not be shocked to learn that Denver’s front office celebrated this Towns trade just as much as anyone actually involved in the deal. As Denver aims for two titles in three years, this might have been the organization’s biggest move of the offseason, and it didn’t even have to lift a finger.
As it currently stands, no other West championship contender has proven they have the ultimate antidote to trying to beat Jokic. With Towns, the Timberwolves did. But that reality is dead and gone now.
It should be music to the Nuggets’ ears.
