DENVER — With the season on the line, Denver Nuggets head coach David Adelman said pregame that Game 5 Monday night would be “all hands on deck.”
It wasn’t a smokescreen.
Playing down a man thanks to Aaron Gordon’s ailing calf, the Nuggets looked early and often to players whose previous roles in this series have varied from inconsistent to nonexistent.
Spencer Jones starred. Cameron Johnson played his best game of the series. Jonas Valnciunas contributed. Tyus Jones played his first non-garbage time minutes of the series as the Nuggets played 10 deep.
The result was a 125-113 Nuggets win over the Minnesota Timberwolves to cut their series deficit to 3-2 and keep their season alive.
Nikola Jokić (27 points, 16 assists, 12 rebounds) and Jamal Murray (24 points, 7 assists, 4 rebounds) led the way. But they didn’t have to do it all, and they didn’t run out of gas down the stretch. For the first time since a Game 1 win, the Nuggets didn’t look overmatched after halftime.
Instead they rode a 13-of-21 shooting effort from the field to a 37-point third quarter that iced the win and allowed a rowdy Denver crowd to spend the fourth quarter largely celebrating the extension of the season. And they flustered a Timberwolves offense playing without Anthony Edwards and Donte Divincenzo, forcing 25 turnovers to create repeated transition opportunities on offense.
“I think that is the first game that we did something they were doing to us,” Jokić said of turning defense into transition buckets. “Those 2-on-1s, 1-on-0s … definitely are something that kills the opponent. You work so much for points and someone else goes in and lays up. …
“It just kills your momentum. Definitely that’s something that we need to do more.”
Spencer Jones stars in place of Aaron Gordon
Jones earned his first standard NBA contract in February after playing his first 1 ½ NBA seasons on a two-way deal. Despite playing in the first playoff series of his career, he’s earned the trust of Adelman and his teammates and started in place of Gordon for a second time this series.
The result was one of the best games of Jones’ short career. He hit back-to-back 3s in the third quarter that helped Denver open its lead to 15 points.
He finished the night with 20 points while shooting 7 of 9 from the field and 4 of 5 from 3.
“Some guys want opportunities,” Adelman said of Jones after the game. “Other guys take them and run with them. He’s done that the whole season.”
Jones was also the primary defender on Minnesota’s No. 1 option, Julius Randle. He battled the big man repeatedly in the post. The physicality was an element frequently missing from the Nuggets during their three-game skid heading into Tuesday night.
“I was kind of excited to play in the playoffs because it feeds more to my game, less ticky-tack fouls, I can be more aggressive,” Jones said. “You saw that with me and Randle battling all night like that.
“They let go a lot more physicality. I love that aspect. That’s why I really wanted to play in the playoffs, you know, to get the refs off my back just a little bit.”
Role players, bench step up
Cameron Johnson, who averaged 10 points in Games 1-4, scored a series-high 18 points while shooting 8 of 13 from the field.
Tyus Jones and Valanciunas, who were teammates for two seasons with the Memphis Grizzlies, played key minutes together down the stretch. They weren’t spectacular. But they got the job done where Denver had faltered in Games 2-4.
“Tyus was Tyus,” Adelman said. “Nothing spectacular, just clean, just playing clean basketball.”
Clean Nuggets basketball was an element that was previously missing for much of the series.
Can Denver do it on the road?
The series now heads back to Minneapolis for Game 6 with the Nuggets facing two more elimination games in a best-case scenario. But they still have a chance. And they’ll face a depleted Timberwolves team that will continue to play without Edwards (knee) and Divincenzo (Achilles).
But it won’t come easy on the road, even with Minnesota playing shorthanded. Role players tend to thrive at home in the NBA. Producing on the road is a different task altogether, especially when the bright lights of the playoffs are glaring down.
The Nuggets have twice rallied from 3-1 playoff deficits during the Jokić-Murray era, with both of those wins arriving in the 2020 Bubble postseason. If they want to survive a Game 6 to get a Game 7 back at home for another rally from 3-1, they’ll need their role players to thrive again on Thursday — this time on the road.
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