2026 West 1st Round Playoffs: (3) Denver Nuggets Vs. (6) Minnesota Timberwolves

Christian Braun embarrassed himself this series…he’s not good at anything other than running in transition

paying 25 mil/yr for that is hilarious

 

Nuggets class acts. AG really is the engine of that team.

 

Nah. Murray had a great season, a career year. He definitely hit the skids against the T-Wolves intensity, but so did Jokic.

This series reminded me of Rockets/Lakers games 1 and 2. One coach was short-handed, but he adapted on the fly and got the most out of his players. The other is getting justifiably scorched.

 

Think about the butterfly effects of Denver winning that last game of the season against SA...wow...

 

I still like him a lot but they need to make serious changes to the roster before Jokic leaves his prime and the championship window closes. Gordon, Cam and Braun should not start on that team anymore.

 

Gordon seemingly hurt every postseason

 

That’s nuts

 

Lakers about to get Jokic for Marcus Smart and Bronny...

 

This definitely makes our path easier. If we can find a way to beat OKC.. we going to the finals, baby!!

 

I'm interested to see what Denver does this off season... I believe they are heavily cap constrained, so I wonder if there's a small chance that they blow things up.

 

Proven right and we would've gotten smoked by them too. Refs even tried to help the Nuggets for sure. Jokic really needs to get in better shape.

 

Jamal with his best Jalen Green impression. God dayyum.

 

Olajuwon > Jokic

 

Should never be a doubt. Jokic is great player and deserves his place in history, but I hate when they disrespect Dream knowing damn well this guy brought it in both sides of the court.

 

The thing is I actually like Christian Braun as a 6th man type of dude, he hustles and he's a good finisher around the rim and he's "good for a bench player" at most things. But $125M was a massive overpay in a league where roleplayer guards his size are getting passed around for peanuts.

It's been a repeated pattern with Denver. They'll develop a nice roleplayer in-house and promptly massively overpay him. They did it with Murray, MPJ, and now Braun. It ruins their ability to make trades or signings that actually improve their team. I've been hard on Stone and I still don't think he is a championship level GM and should probably be replaced, but he has at least managed to avoid tying up huge amounts of money in long-term, bad, and guaranteed contracts. (Though in aggregate, we did waste a lot of Tilman's money this past offseason, but at least we aren't handcuffed by any of those contracts for 4-5 years.)