Denver Nuggets at Minnesota Timberwolves Game Preview

Denver Nuggets at Minnesota Timberwolves
7:00 pm Central
Fox Sports North

After losing their first three games and four of their first five, the Nuggets have won six of eight, including a home and home with the Mavericks Saturday and Monday to move over .500 for the first time this year at 7-6.

The driving force has been Ty Lawson, the only Nugget player averaging more than 26 minutes a game, has been going 36 a night with a strong 20 points and almost 9 assists per. He's been quite efficient as well, making threes and getting to the line over 7 times a game.

Team wide, their offense has been working through Lawson and excellent offensive rebounding led by Kenneth Faried and J.J. Hickson. That was a real problem for the Wolves in their first matchup, a 117-113 Nuggets win in Denver, as they collected 14 offensive rebounds as a team.

Meanwhile, the Wolves need to find their offense again after two consecutive games at 40% or worse from the field. In fact, the Wolves have not shot better then 45% from the floor since the last meeting with the Nuggets. They must find a way to get some easy ones, which may be possible against an aggressive Nuggets team that likes to play fast and gives up an opponents' efg% of 48%.

The Wolves must match Denver's aggression on the glass as well, as the Nuggets tend to give up their share of offensive rebounds while they collect a lot of their own. Hopefully Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic can do the job on both backboards.

Expected Lineups

Nuggets

Ty Lawson
Randy Foye
Wilson Chandler
Kenneth Fareid
J.J. Hickson

Wolves

Ricky Rubio
Kevin Martin
Corey Brewer
Kevin Love
Nikola Pekovic

We'll be back with a game thread later. It's almost drinking time.