Denver Gazette beat writer Vinny Benedetto takes you around the NBA and inside the Nuggets locker room:

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Nikola Jokic doesn’t spend much time second-guessing, but there’s a pivotal possession from a 119-114 loss in Game 2 he wants back.

After Anthony Edwards was called for traveling with the Timberwolves up two with 31 seconds left, Jamal Murray and Jokic went to the trusted two-man game. Jokic flipped the ball to Murray on the fringe of the Nuggets’ logo at center court and set a screen that sent Murray to the right. Murray got the ball back to Jokic at the free-throw line with a sharp bounce pass.

The Nuggets had a four-on-three advantage with Anthony Edwards the only man between Jokic and the rim.

“Ant’ kind of stepped up and jumped in the air,” Jokic said. “I thought I had a pass.”

The pass was there until Julius Randle abandoned Aaron Gordon in the left corner to get to Christian Braun, who was hanging on the left block. Edwards prevented a clean pass. Braun won a fight for the loose ball, went up for the game-tying layup and was fouled.

“We had two free throws, so it’s not a bad ending,” Jokic said. “I definitely should’ve taken the floater.”

Braun missed the first free throw and made the second to make it a one-point game. That was Denver’s final point of the night. There was no finger pointing after Minnesota snatched home-court advantage.

“I missed three, four straight shots before that,” Jamal Murray said, taking ownership of his cold close. “It’s going to happen. It’s part of it. We’ve all got to be better. We all could’ve played better. It’s not on one person. That’s how the game goes sometimes.”

When Rudy Gobert was on the court, he continued to serve as the primary defender on Jokic. In the lengthy stretches of the second and third quarter where Gobert was on the bench, the Timberwolves went small. Jokic enjoyed mixed results outside of the third quarter when he scored 16 of his 24 points. Nuggets coach David Adelman explained more aggression wasn’t the only difference between Jokic’s second and third quarter.

“Going inside is one thing. Getting the ball to him is another. I thought the ball pressure got to us a little bit. We were trying to run specific sets to get him on the block or to the nail (center of the free-throw line), and a lot of those things end up with Nikola having to handle the ball. When he has to handle it, that takes you out of things to get the ball inside to where you want to go,” Adelman said.

“I thought they impacted our other people, which made it harder for us to facilitate the ball to him in places we want to get it to.”

Jokic needed 20 shots to score his points. A 21st attempt could’ve changed things.

“You always want him to shoot that shot, but he sees what he sees out there. He’s playing. If he sees his teammate open, he’s going to make that play. I trust CB to make free throws,” Adelman said.

“That happens in the NBA. You’re going to have moments that you don’t want to remember. That’s a tough moment for ‘CB’ after playing such a good game. He was all over the place in this game, had so much responsibility on both sides of the ball. I feel for ‘CB,’ and I trust the best player in the world to make the decisions he makes. … The decision he makes in a game is always unselfish, always for the right reasons.”

What I’m thinking

A lack of balance came back to bite the Nuggets.

The easiest buckets come from fast breaks, especially against a defense like Minnesota’s, and Denver finished the game with a 21-13 advantage in fast-break points. Too often, however, the Nuggets were too eager to get out and run.

Minnesota turned nine offensive rebounds into a 20-3 advantage in second-chance points.

“We lost this game on second-chance points. Every time we had control of this game, we gave up a free-throw rebound, a really soft crash from the corner (where) nobody touches anybody,” Adelman said.

“In a hard-fought game like that, you work so hard to get a stop and then just give up second-chance points, it kept them in the game. Every time we made a run, it felt like that’s what stopped the run. That’s something we have to clean up as a team.”

All 15 of Jokic’s rebounds came on the defensive glass. Aaron Gordon (seven) and Jamal Murray (four) were the only other players to grab more than a few defensive rebounds. Rudy Gobert (three), Naz Reid (two) and Ayo Dosunmu (two) grabbed multiple offensive rebounds for Minnesota.

“I feel like we’re getting stops and trying to get out and run, but we’ve got to grab the board first,” Murray said.

“Even if it slows our pace down a little bit, I think just keeping Rudy and all those other guys off the glass, bringing more bodies in there and taking our time, we might sacrifice some transition buckets or opportunities, but hopefully we play good enough defense, we can just limit them to one shot over and over and we can out-execute them.”

That sounds like a formula to regain home-court advantage in Game 3 on Thursday in Minnesota.

What they’re saying

Timberwolves forward Jaden McDaniels didn’t mince words about Minnesota’s offensive approach after winning Game 2.

“Go at Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders,” McDaniels said. “Tim Hardaway, Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, the whole team, just go at them.”

McDaniels doubled down when follow-ups allowed a potential adjustment.

“Yeah, they’re all bad defenders. … They don’t got people that can defend the rim. If he is there, we’re more athletic than them.”

— Minnesota shot-blocker Rudy Gobert was not named one of three finalists for the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award.

“It’s not the first time I get disrespected (and) probably not the last,” Gobert said. “I’m going to keep being myself. If they want to disrespect greatness, take it for granted, whatever, sooner or later they’ll realize the impact.”

The Frenchman was qualified to talk his stuff after holding Jokic to a 1-for-7 mark from the field in the fourth quarter, even if the one make was an emphatic driving dunk over the four-time Defensive Player of the Year. Gobert finished fourth in this year’s vote.

“I was lucky,” Gobert said. “A (not) top-three defender cannot do that, so I was lucky.”

What I’m following

• Oklahoma City guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ran away with the Clutch Player of the Year award, finishing with 484 points in the voting. Murray finished second with 117 points, one more than Anthony Edwards. Jokic received one first-place vote but finished sixth.
• Spurs center Victor Wembanyama became the first player unanimously selected Defensive Player of the Year. He’s also the youngest player to win the award. Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren finished second, and Detroit’s Ausar Thompson took third.
• The Northwest Division is going to be even tougher next season. Utah is keeping its first-round pick, which is guaranteed to be in the top eight, after winning a tiebreaker over the Kings.
• Former Nuggets assistant Jordi Fernandez and his staff received multi-year contract extensions from the Brooklyn Nets on Monday.