Big man Karl-Anthony Towns scored 27 points and pulled down 12 rebounds, Anthony Edwards also had 27 and the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves routed the Denver Nuggets, 106-80, on Monday to take a commanding 2-0 lead in a Western Conference semifinal series.
The Timberwolves won without center Rudy Gobert, who was away from the team for personal reasons, the birth of his first child. The Wolves, holding a decisive edge on the defending NBA champions, head back to the ‘Twin City’, Minneapolis for Game 3 of the best-of-seven series on Friday.
Even without Gobert’s services, a three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, the Timberwolves held Denver to a season low in points. Jamal Murray scored eight points on a dismal 3-for-18 shooting but had a career-high 13 boards, and Nikola Jokic finished with a double-double, 16 points and 16 rebounds.
“When you don’t have the Defensive Player of the Year, you’ve got to step your game up,” Towns told TNT. “We all understood the challenge coming in against the defending champions.”
Aaron Gordon led the Nuggets with 20 points, and Justin Holiday had 13 off the bench. Reggie Jackson exited the game in the fourth quarter due to an ankle injury.
Naz Reid and Nickeil Alexander-Walker scored 14 points each for the Timberwolves, who have gotten off to a blazing start in the playoffs with six consecutive wins.
“We expect to win no matter who’s with us and who’s not,” Minnesota coach Chris Finch said. “Tweaked a few things with the game plan and went at them.”
Embed from Getty ImagesMinnesota was clicking on all cylinders offensively, paced by Towns scoring 20 points in the first half and the team shooting 54.5 percent from the field before halftime. The Timberwolves used a dominant surge extending across the first and second quarters to take a strangle hold on the game.
Leading by the slimmest of margins, 18-17, the Timberwolves proceeded to outscore the Nuggets 24-5 to lead by 20 after a Reid 3-pointer with just over eight minutes to go in the first half. The Nuggets got within 15, 43-28, but Minnesota did not take their foot off the gas and had a strong finish to the second quarter to lead 61-35 at the break.
So jarred were the normally poised Nuggets by the events of the second quarter that coach Michael Malone threw a tantrum at an official and scuffling point guard Murray threw a heat pack onto the court in anger as Towns was about to score on a bunny.
Malone said he did not have a clue it was Murray who tossed the heat pack, saying, “I knew a heating pack was on the floor, but it was not in my field of vision.”
Nor did the officials see him throw it, added crew chief Marc Davis.
“We weren’t aware it had come from the bench. If we would have been aware it came from the bench, we could have reviewed it under the hostile act trigger. The penalty would have been a technical foul,” Davis told a pool reporter.
Finch said he knew only that the heat pack had come from the Nuggets’ bench.
“We tried to impress upon (the officials) that there’s probably not many fans in the building that have a heat pack. So, it probably had to come from the bench, which they found logical,” Finch said. “But yeah, it’s inexcusable and dangerous.”
Denver continued to struggle mightily in the third quarter and the Timberwolves took advantage, leading by as many as 32, 73-41, on Alexander-Walker’s 3-pointer with 7:20 left in the period.
The Nuggets were finally able to find some offensive punch late in the third to cut it to 82-60 heading into the fourth and final quarter.
Jackson opened the final quarter with a 3-pointer to slice the deficit to 19, but Denver then missed a pair of shots from deep. Towns made a pair of free throws and Alexander-Walker soon hit his fourth 3 of the contest to make it 87-65 with 9:18 left.
Another extended run widened the gap even further to 97-72 as Minnesota closed it out.
“It’s going to be a challenge (coming back in the series),” Denver coach Michael Malone said. “The body language of our guys is not where it needs to be, but we just got beat up in our building — we got embarrassed in front of our fans.
“The good thing is we don’t play until Friday.”
Game 3 is Friday in Minnesota at the Target Center (9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN).
