The Minnesota Timberwolves looked ready to steal Game 1 on Saturday afternoon, then lost control of it piece by piece and fell to the Denver Nuggets anyway. They led 33-23 after the first period, but a horrible third quarter and a second-quarter stall from Julius Randle left them chasing the game in a loss that felt more self-inflicted than forced on them.
For nearly seven minutes, Denver’s Big Three of Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon did not make a field goal. Rudy Gobert owned that stretch against Jokic, holding the three-time most valuable player of the year to one rebound, one assist, zero points and three turnovers while Donte DiVincenzo scored Minnesota’s first six points and Jaden McDaniels added 10 of the next 12. The Timberwolves also generated three steals and outscored the Nuggets 11-3 over a three-minute burst in the first quarter, building a 27-15 lead before Denver called timeout and then stretching it to 33-23 by the end of the period.
That opening looked like the kind of road punch an underdog needs to seize home-court advantage in a playoff series. Minnesota was active, physical and in charge, and Gobert’s early work on Jokic gave the Wolves exactly the defensive edge they needed. For a moment, the matchup looked tilted their way.
Then the game shifted on the details. Randle returned in the second quarter after sitting with two fouls in the first five minutes, and the offense bogged down around him. The flow that had carried Minnesota through the first quarter disappeared, and Denver had time to settle in. By the third quarter, the Timberwolves were described as horrible, a period that drained what remained of their early control and turned a promising start into a familiar mess.
That is what makes the loss harder to dismiss as the product of injuries alone. The Timberwolves were dinged up and dysfunctional, but the damage on Saturday came less from circumstance than from their own errors, the kind that have dogged them across the 2025-26 season. They had the champion on the ropes early, and they let the game slip by failing to sustain the pressure.
Game 1 answered the main question with a blunt result: the Timberwolves had a real path to stealing the opener, but they gave it away themselves. The nba logo may have been most visible in their early surge, yet the final story was one of a team that could not hold its edge when the game demanded it most.
