{"id":709467,"date":"2026-04-13T06:36:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T06:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709467\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T06:36:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T06:36:22","slug":"nuggets-david-adelman-on-facing-timberwolves-in-nba-playoffs-were-not-ducking-anybody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709467\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuggets’ David Adelman on facing Timberwolves in NBA playoffs: ‘We’re not ducking anybody’"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO \u2014 All that talk of matchup manipulation by the Nuggets was much ado about nothing. Whether or not they had Houston in mind, there was no escaping their destiny.<\/p>\n

Denver and Minnesota are meant for each other. Nikola Jokic and Anthony Edwards<\/a> might be meant to do this forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not ducking anybody,\u201d Nuggets coach David Adelman<\/a> said after a limited version of his team knocked off the Spurs, 128-118, to clinch the No. 3 seed in the NBA playoffs.<\/p>\n

Easy to say now, certainly. But Denver had earned the right to talk by upending expectations with two short-handed wins in the final weekend of the regular season. One against Oklahoma City. One at San Antonio. The result is a third Nuggets vs. Timberwolves playoff series in four years. Call it a rubber match.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve played so many times over the years \u2014 playoffs, regular season,\u201d Adelman said. \u201cWe know each other, with Tim (Connelly)<\/a> over there and Chris Finch and Micah (Nori)<\/a> and those guys. So we know it\u2019s gonna be a battle. It always is with that team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The optics surrounding Denver\u2019s decision to rest all five starters Friday and four of them Sunday were suspicious. Minnesota was locked as the No. 6 seed, waiting for the third-place finisher. Were the Nuggets running scared from their rivals? Were they still haunted by the image of Ant Man taunting fans on his way out of Ball Arena after a 20-point Game 7 comeback two years ago? Did they prefer the cushier first-round matchup against the Rockets?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won the game. So we didn\u2019t mess with the game. Simple as that,\u201d said backup center Jonas Valanciunas, who had warned on Friday that gaming the system is begging for bad karma. \u201cWe did everything. No matter who\u2019s playing, we played hard. Coming out of timeouts, after the halftime, during the quarters, we played hard no matter what. And that\u2019s our face. That\u2019s our identity. That\u2019s what we\u2019re gonna do until the end of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two things can be true at once. It wasn\u2019t lost on the Nuggets that they\u2019re better equipped to contain Kevin Durant than most superstars (including Edwards), in part because KD is simply not looking to get around his defender and score at the rim as often as most primary shot creators. Edwards is young, spry and a certified blow-by threat in addition to his jump-shooting pedigree. Lump that in with the overexposure these teams have had to each other, and yes, the Timberwolves are probably a tougher matchup on paper.<\/p>\n

And yet, as team sources detailed to The Denver Post in recent days<\/a>, there was enough nuance to this whole playoff path debate \u2014 Minnesota then San Antonio? Houston then OKC? \u2014 that the arguments canceled each other out. Health was the one controllable variable that was unambiguous. A decision was reached with front office involvement and input from\u00a0key players such as Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, a source told The Post: Injury avoidance mattered more than seeding.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t mean the people playing and coaching the games didn\u2019t care about the results.<\/p>\n

That much was clear from the enthusiasm on Denver\u2019s bench Sunday, and from the effort put forth by Jokic. He was only on the court to meet a games-played quota so that he could appear on MVP and All-NBA ballots. But he turned the obligatory work trip into an aggressive display of offense, scoring 23 first-half points to the tune of \u201coverrated\u201d chants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he embraced it because how hard those guys were playing with him,\u201d Adelman said. \u201cAnd I think there\u2019s a respect value there when he sees guys playing for opportunities. And a guy like him that\u2019s done everything in this game, I think he respects that. And I heard the \u2018overrated.\u2019 I don\u2019t know about the \u2018overrated\u2019 thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 65-game minimum wasn\u2019t the only new-age NBA rule that Jokic was up against in San Antonio, it turns out. One of the lingering questions this weekend was why the Nuggets would rest Jokic on Friday but make him travel to Texas, if the plan was for him to play only one of the last two games. After all, his fellow starters stayed home in Denver. Why not manage him in reverse? According to a source, it was in large part because the Nuggets-Spurs game was flexed to a national broadcast (ESPN) earlier in the week, making Denver subject to a Player Participation Policy<\/a> fine if both Jokic and Murray sat out.<\/p>\n

The PPP stipulates that teams cannot rest multiple healthy star players in the same game, with stricter enforcement for nationally televised games. The Nuggets didn\u2019t have to worry about that until recently, because a star player is defined by the rule as someone selected to an All-Star or All-NBA team in the last three years. Murray wasn\u2019t either of those until February. Denver is finally a multi-star team.<\/p>\n

If Jokic was already going to play 15 minutes this weekend to satisfy one rule, the Nuggets decided they might as well make sure they satisfy another.<\/p>\n

They were also at least somewhat influenced to choose the San Antonio game, according to three sources, by the players opposite Jokic on Friday and Sunday. More specifically: Denver was wary of Lu Dort\u2019s tendency to be involved with plays in which opponents end up injured. The Thunder wing was confronted by Jokic earlier this season after sticking out his hip and leg to trip the Nuggets center. Dort was ejected, and he said later that he apologized to Jokic. He was the only Oklahoma City starter who played Friday, and he earned boos from Denver when his forearm struck Nuggets wing David Roddy in the face during a rebound.<\/p>\n

In San Antonio, Jokic was facing an old friend, ex-Nuggets center Mason Plumlee. Denver raced to a 23-point lead and never looked back. Except maybe six or seven times during the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re coming together. We\u2019re playing great,\u201d Bruce Brown said. \u201cWe\u2019re getting stops. Main thing was our defense. Each game, we\u2019re getting better and better.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the topic of Minnesota, Denver\u2019s most relevant players who had made the trip to San Antonio didn\u2019t have a lot of initial thoughts to share about the matchup. But Brown entertained this much: \u201cI guess you could say it\u2019s a little rivalry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be a Tuesday start for prep,\u201d Adelman said. \u201cTomorrow is a (day off) for players, but also for coaches. That allows us to get ourselves prepared, organize the first couple days of practice, and you kind of work your way off those practices. See what you\u2019ve missed, what didn\u2019t go well, fill in the blanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one immediate and obvious advantage to facing the Timberwolves, it\u2019s that Adelman already knows them like the back of his hand.<\/p>\n

As for any perceived disadvantages? Now he can say definitively that Denver isn\u2019t scared.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t duck opponents,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they didn\u2019t want to duck us. We\u2019re not ducking anybody. And everybody talks about the best matchup and all these things. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s gonna happen. And if you\u2019re asking to play against Kevin Durant \u2026 what?\u00a0So the opponent\u2019s the opponent. And we have a ton of respect for them, as I know they do for us. It\u2019s gonna be a hell of a series.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2014 All that talk of matchup manipulation by the Nuggets was much ado about nothing. Whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[375,2276,7,6850,765,250,14871,301,187,3943,130,766,292,1035,762,6890,938,165,182,12445,252,6,11,253,302,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-709467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-anthony-edwards","9":"tag-ball-arena","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-bruce-brown","12":"tag-colorado","13":"tag-david-adelman","14":"tag-david-roddy","15":"tag-denver","16":"tag-denver-nuggets","17":"tag-denvernuggets","18":"tag-espn","19":"tag-front-range","20":"tag-houston","21":"tag-injury","22":"tag-jamal-murray","23":"tag-jonas-valanciunas","24":"tag-kevin-durant","25":"tag-latest-headlines","26":"tag-lu-dort","27":"tag-mason-plumlee","28":"tag-more-nuggets-news","29":"tag-nba","30":"tag-nba-playoffs","31":"tag-nikola-jokic","32":"tag-nuggets","33":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116396017852967938","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}