When the Denver Nuggets were sent home by the Oklahoma City Thunder in a blowout Game 7 loss, many people looked to what the Nuggets did wrong as they came up short in a Game 7 in the Conference Semifinals for the second straight year. After four games of the Conference Finals recently in which the Thunder have clearly looked like the superior team over the Minnesota Timberwolves, maybe it’s time to think about how the depleted Nuggets weren’t actually as poor of a team that they were given credit for, especially on the defensive side of the ball.

All season long, the Nuggets were looked at as a team that wasn’t able to put it together on the defensive end of the floor as they stumbled to the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference by the season’s end. They posted the 12th-worst defensive rating in the league in the regular season (115.1) and had so many lapses that made fans question where the heart and passion went.

The opening round of the playoffs didn’t see much change from Denver defensively as they snuck by the LA Clippers, but a successful zone defense from David Adelman in the West Semis sparked a level of defense that hasn’t been achieved against the Thunder by their other playoff opponents.

Not many teams have been able to stop the Thunder all season long, and the Nuggets have done the best job at doing so throughout these playoffs. Against the top-seeded Thunder, the Timberwolves and the Memphis Grizzlies posted defensive ratings of 117.6 and 117.4, respectively. Meanwhile, Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets posted a defensive rating of 113.8 in their seven games against Oklahoma City.

Compared to the Grizzlies and Timberwolves, the Nuggets snagged a higher percentage of defensive rebounds, recorded more steals, and performed better in the clutch against Oklahoma City. Despite having 3.5 healthy players in the starting lineup by Game 7, along with zero trustable bench players, Denver was still able to put up a better fight than the other teams in the West.

Monday’s Game 4 of the Conference Finals showed that Minnesota’s offense wasn’t the problem, it was the team’s inability to get stops against the Thunder and league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Minnesota has tried to break out a zone against the Thunder in similar fashion to Denver, but have not seen the same success as Adelman’s Nuggets.

The Wolves drop into a zone but the ball screen occupies both NAW and Gobert leaving Ant to have to contend with Wallace popping out to three and Hartenstein in the dunker spot. Great job of OKC putting him in a tough spot. pic.twitter.com/EMtSivGCtX

— Mo Dakhil (@MoDakhil_NBA) May 27, 2025

Maybe seven games of seeing the zone against Denver helped OKC prepare for the Conference finals, or maybe Minnesota just isn’t good at playing zone.

The recent announcement of Russell Westbrook undergoing hand surgery also showed that Denver was playing at this level with three of their top six players fighting significant injuries. While moral victories don’t translate into rings (just ask the 2023 Lakers, who had moral victories in every game of the Conference Finals that the Nuggets swept them in), Denver did a lot of good things against the Thunder in the playoffs given the circumstances they were dealing with.