Jaden McDaniels took perhaps his most notable shot after Minnesota's 119-114 playoff win at Denver in Game 2 on Monday night.
The Timberwolves forward pretty much labeled all the Nuggets' players bad defenders. Thrown in there were All-Stars Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray.
“Go after Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders,” said McDaniels, who had 14 points and three assists. "Tim Hardaway (Jr.), Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, the whole team, just go at them.”
So they're all bad defenders?
“Yeah, they’re all bad defenders,” McDaniels added.
The Timberwolves overcame a 19-point deficit to even the first-round series, which shifts to Minnesota for Game 3 on Thursday night. Anthony Edwards led the way with 30 points despite playing on a sore knee. He also had 10 rebounds.
“They don’t got people that can defend the rim,” McDaniels said. "We’re still more athletic than them and just got to be able to finish when we do.”
Timberwolves television analyst Jim Petersen, speaking to WCCO's Chad Hartman, said while McDaniels is correct in his assesment, it's still a shocking thing to hear a player say.
"You have to get in the rim, they're 28th in shot blocking, Nikola Jokic is a traffic cone a lot of times, Jamal Murray is not a good defender," Petersen notes. "And I got to tell you, when I heard that Jaden McDaniels quote last night, this is the time we're in right now, I thought it was AI for a second. Because, I'm going like, there's no player I have ever heard, I've never heard any player at any sport at any level ever say what he just said last night. I mean, really. It's a little shocking because Jaden, you know, he is, the term we use is petulant. He's a petulant player."
Jokic had 24 points and 15 rebounds — all on the defensive end — while Murray scored 30 points. But Denver's dynamic duo shot a combined 2 of 12 for four points in the fourth quarter. Murray had a chance to tie the game with a 3-pointer in the closing seconds but elected to pull up for a 2-point shot instead.
He missed.
“I was happy he took the two points,” Edwards said. “I thought he had a good look at a 3 when he first came off but yeah, he took the 2-pointer. I guess if he made it, we would have been in a free-throw situation. But yeah, I’m kind of happy he took the 2-pointer.”
Murray said he “didn't make enough shots tonight.”
"That’s really about it,” he added. "We all could have played better. It’s not all on one person, that’s just the way the game goes sometimes. They played hard as well. It was a good game. I thought we had the game in our hands, but we just didn’t make enough shots, in my opinion.”
It is certainly bulletin board material for the Nuggets, as it should be when an opposing player so blatently calls you out. But will this make the Nuggets try harder in game 3 of the playoffs? Petersen says no chance.
"It's going to tick them off. But they're not going to play any harder," he says.
