Nuggets at Timberwolves Game #24

Nuggets at Wolves
7:00 pm CST
FS North

The Nuggets visit Target Center for the first time this season after the Wolves have been in Denver twice already, splitting two games including Friday night's disappointing come-from-ahead overtime loss. Usually, it's a relief to be back at home, but the Wolves have been particularly moribund in their own building this year, for reasons that aren't clear. Hopefully they can get a start on turning that around tonight, as winning on your home court, especially against middling teams like the Nuggets, is a must to build a base for success.

The Nuggets are coming off a win last night at home against the Rockets that went to the wire, after which they had to fly to the Twin Cities, so hopefully the Wolves can take advantage of a team on the 2nd night of a back to back, especially since they will be that team tomorrow night when they are in New York to take on the Knicks.

The Nuggets have won four out of their last five, with Danilo Gallinari shooting it much better, and relative youngsters Gary Harris and (especially) Will Barton emerging as key contributors. There are things to like about this Nuggets team, and when the get Jusuf Nurkic back later this year, they will be even deeper up front, with a nice array of wing players to handle the bulk of the scoring. Point guard remains a problem that might or might not be solved ultimately by rookie Emmanuel Mudiay.

Mudiay missed last night's game with an ankle injury, and is questionable for tonight, but at any rate is not playing well early in his career. He might be losing playing time at any rate, having gone only 22 and 12 minutes (vs. the Wolves) respectively in the two games prior to last night.

The Wolves meanwhile are coming off losses in both of their games away from home over the weekend. Their two trips to Denver have been very different; in the first one, the 2nd game of the season, Karl-Anthony Towns dominated with a 28-14 and announced his presence to the league as the Wolves cruised late to a big win. On Friday, they did not get the ball to Towns, at least during regulation when he had only six shots, two on put-backs, while instead relying heavily on Kevin Martin, who played a team-high 41 minutes and scored 22 points on 20 shots.

Still, it was the Nuggets getting hot from beyond the arc in the 2nd half of that game that doomed the Wolves, who did a poor job defending it. Hopefully that doesn't happen again. I'd like to see them go to KAT a little more tonight; Kevin Martin will find his shots, he's been doing it for over a decade. It would also be nice to see Andrew Wiggins break out of his mini-funk and also have a big game at home, which has been an issue (though likely random) all season.

Expected linups

Nuggets

Jameer Nelson
Gary Harris
Danilo Gallinari
Kenneth Faried
Joffrey Lauvergne

Wolves

Ricky Rubio
Kevin Martin
Andrew Wiggins
Kevin Garnett
Karl-Anthony Towns

Our blogging buddies are over at Denver Stiffs. Be excellent.

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Enjoy. Chat. Go.