Lightning Journal: 20 Games In, Who Is This Team?

Troy Renck: A day later, hearts remain in throats, fists remain in a ball. The frustration and disappointment with the Nuggets’ season-ending defeat is palpable. There is no shame in losing to a team as talented as the Minnesota Timberwolves. But the Nuggets did not lose. They choked. No NBA team over the last 25 years has ever squandered a 20-point lead in a Game 7.

In an emptying locker room of players who had forgotten what it feels like to end a season with a loss, nobody was in uncharted territory as much as Christian Braun. Towel draped over his head, eyes red underneath it, the second-year guard was in a state of disbelief that replicated the entire Nuggets fanbase.

Ant-Man didn’t just laugh loudest. He laughed last. “I had Jamal (Murray) in handcuffs,” Anthony Edwards chuckled as he walked the halls of Ball Arena after Minnesota stunned the Nuggets, 98-90, to win Game 7 of their second-round series. You know what stings? He wasn’t wrong. When Jaden McDaniels ran into foul trouble, the Timberwolves’ chatty star relished the task of covering the Nuggets’ best playoff weapon. With 4:49 left on the clock, the Blue Arrow sank a 12-footer to pull the defending NBA champs to with a bucket, 85-82.

The Nuggets paged Dr. Heimlich. In their biggest game of the season, the defending champs choked. It sounds unfair because of the difficulty of repeating, because of the competition, but is not when weighed against history. The Nuggets are the first team to squander a 20-point lead in a Game 7. Wasn’t it bad enough that the Avs broke our hearts on Friday night? There’s no way to overstate how crushing this loss is in context with this team, this time, this place.

From celebration to cataclysmic ouster. You could almost feel the afterparty warming up. The Nuggets came out of the halftime locker room up 15 and promptly pushed their lead to 20. You could see Luka Doncic and Dallas preparing to fly northwest for Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals. Then it all came crashing down.

Nikola Jokic’s expression was either vacant or vengeful, defeated or determined. Staring at the basketball court but maybe beyond it, too, he stood alone on the Target Center baseline and watched the fourth quarter of a historic clobbering without taking his seat on the bench. Was he antsy to jump on the team plane back to Denver to play Game 7 immediately?