MINNEAPOLIS — There’s no more space between the Nuggets and the brink.

“We put ourselves in a really bad spot,” Christian Braun acknowledged Saturday after the Nuggets took the last step back before the edge that ends their season. “All you can do is fix it. The spot we’re in is not where we wanted to be. We’ve got to change it. We’ve got to go get one at home, come back here, and I think things will tighten up.”

Braun hasn’t been part of a 3-1 comeback, but Denver’s two most important players have done it before. Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray led the charge as the Nuggets became the first team to win consecutive series after losing three of the first four games back in the 2020 bubble. The first came against the Jazz back when Rudy Gobert was anchoring Utah’s defense. The second came against the Clippers when a scuffle seemingly shifted the momentum in Denver’s favor. Gobert is again Jokic’s foe this time around, and the Timberwolves might’ve finally awakened the beast, who ranked his play through four games as “average” after Jaden McDaniels rubbed the Nuggets’ noses in defeat with a bucket in the final seconds that set off a brief skirmish.

Things are a little different now, as the Nuggets will have to win a true road game to get this one to a decisive Game 7, but that’s getting too far ahead.

“We’ve been in this situation before. The most important one is the next one,” Jokic said. “We’re going to go home and (then) try to get the series back here.”

Nuggets coach David Adelman was more concerned with his team’s uncharacteristic offensive output than a lack of fight in Game 4. Denver failed to score 100 points in consecutive games for the first time this season. The Timberwolves finished Game 4 with 112 points after McDaniels’ immaterial layup. Despite McDaniels’ claims that a handful of Denver’s key rotation players are bad defenders, including Jokic and Murray, after Game 2, that hasn’t been Denver’s downfall yet.

“You hold a team to 112 in the NBA, you should have a great chance to win the game,” Adelman said. “It’s happened two games in a row. That’s why the guys in the locker room are very frustrated but very understanding of how close we are to flipping the series.”

The Nuggets have to walk the tightrope along the edge for three more games. With one more loss, Denver will exit in the first round for the first time since the Warriors defeated Denver in the first round of the 2022 playoffs. Braun was a Jayhawk back then, but he’s not in Kansas anymore.

“We just got to show up Game 5, play well in front of our crowd. We owe that to them to show up and play well. We’re going to do that,” Braun said. “It’s not over, and that’s all that matters.”