Lowe: What to expect from this Timberwolves-Nuggets clash of the titans

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• Zach Lowe, ESPN Senior WriterMay 3, 2024, 02:00 PM ET

This clash of Western Conference titans had to happen. There are too many connections between the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves for it not to have. The teams have been eyeing each other all season, coaches spending idle hours scheming up counters.

Both teams are legitimate contenders. This is the toughest opponent Denver has encountered across its past two playoff runs. The road to the NBA's first repeat since 2018 will be much tougher than Denver's path last season -- which began, of course, against the No. 8-seeded Timberwolves.

Ten days after the Nuggets hired Tim Connelly as their top basketball decision-maker in 2013, they traded the No. 27 pick to the Utah Jazz -- who used it on Rudy Gobert. Connelly's first titanic move as the Wolves new president of basketball operations in 2022 was trading a haul to team Gobert with another star big in Karl-Anthony Towns. In Denver, Connelly had long toyed with the idea of pairing Nikola Jokic with a rim protector, sources said.

Calvin Booth, now Denver's general manager, played for the Wolves and worked in Minnesota's front-office before Connelly brought him to Denver. Chris Finch, the Wolves' head coach whose level of sideline participation is uncertain after he sustained a knee injury, was an assistant in Denver the season Jokic became a starter. Micah Nori, the Minnesota assistant who may patrol the sidelines if Finch can't, worked in Denver under current Nuggets head coach Michael Malone for several seasons.

Malone's staff includes two sons of former Wolves head coaches: Ryan Saunders and David Adelman. Saunders was also the Wolves' head coach for parts of three seasons.

If there is an agreed upon starting point for this era of Nuggets basketball, it is probably Dec. 15, 2016 -- known locally as "Jokmas," the day Malone anointed Jokic Denver's starting center. But the Nuggets' seriousness as potential contenders really crystallized on the last day of the following season in Minnesota -- when Denver lost a winner-take-all game for the No. 8 seed in overtime.

On the team's flight back to Denver, Jokic walked from row to row thanking every staff member -- and promising the team would improve.

"It is the kind of thing," Connelly told ESPN in 2020, "that makes your disappointment fade pretty quickly."

In last season's first round, Denver vaulted to a 3-0 lead over the untested Wolves -- who were without Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid due to injury. Towns was melting down again; he scored 21 points on 8-of-27 shooting combined in Games 1 and 2. He had more turnovers in those games -- nine -- than made field goals. Some teams would have let go of the rope.

But improbably, the rest of the series became a defining moment for the Wolves. They fought. Anthony Edwards proved again he was ready for the hottest spotlights. The Wolves found a scheme that seemed to bother Denver: slotting Towns onto Jokic and sliding Gobert onto Aaron Gordon, so that Gobert could rove. Towns finally settled into the playoffs.

They won Game 4 and pushed the Nuggets to the limit in Game 5 in Denver. You could see the realization dawning: We have something here. Imagine if we had Jaden and Naz? Upon winning the first championship in franchise history, several within the Nuggets whispered that Minnesota had been their toughest postseason test -- and wondered what that might portend going forward.

The Wolves are intact now -- huge, physical, dialed in on both ends. They obliterated the Phoenix Suns, overwhelming them on defense, passing and cutting and driving around them on offense with a new precision. The Nuggets trudged through a tense five-game win over the Los Angeles Lakers; Murray shot 40%, including 29% on 3s, and is nursing a calf injury.

The Nuggets' bench, younger now with Bruce Brown and Jeff Green gone, faltered some. Malone in Game 5 staggered Denver's two most important backups -- Christian Braun and Peyton Watson -- to preserve some acceptable threshold of 3-point shooting. That meant more of Murray and Reggie Jackson together, a smallish pairing that will appear even smaller next to the humongous Timberwolves.

On paper, these teams are even: No. 3 (Minnesota) and No. 4 (Denver) in point differential. The Wolves' top-ranked defense carries an average offense. The Nuggets are a surgical scoring machine despite taking the fewest 3s, and have cobbled a solid defense -- No. 9 overall -- with size and speed around Jokic and Murray.

The biggest question about Minnesota's viability as a contender was its collective decision-making on offense outside of Mike Conley. Its defense is unrelenting. It won't shut down the Nuggets, but dragging their efficiency back a few percentage points is a reasonable goal. Score enough and the Wolves have a path to victory.