Hello and welcome to the Athletic NBA show.

Postgame edition.

I'm Dave DeFore.

Here with Seth Part Now in Mo to Kiel, so a little bit of a nerder edition.

Wow, the Nuggets looked much different than they did a week ago, guys.

112.97. The Nuggets look much different than they did a week ago, guys. 112.97, the Nuggets finally win a home game in this series over the Minnesota Timberwolves.

They're now up three games to two in the series.

And Nekola Yokic just put on one of the most epic displays of why he's the MVP yet in this

playoffs.

40 points, 13 assists, no turnovers.

And was somehow better than that stat line.

I mean, no, what he did in the third quarter, I'm sorry, it was just a masterpiece.

That was Picasso, Michelangelo, that was Van Gogh.

That was Beethoven, Mozart.

I've run out of other greatest stuff, but all of that wrapped in one was what he did on the basketball court

in the third court. And I'm going to say something. I thought that Minnesota until like he hit

like five shots in a row and then they started trying stuff just to switch it up, I thought they

guarded him pretty well. It's just what are you going to do? I mean, even when he was hitting stuff,

like they still guarded him well on every single possession. Let's talk a little bit about kind of the flow of the game. First half, you know, the Nuggets finished the first half with only a six point lead, but for some reason, it felt, it felt like a 15 point. They had just, really, there were parts, yeah, for me, there were parts where it just

felt like they were so out, they were out playing them. But then you look at the score and

Minnesota was just hanging in there. And in particular, because Anthony Edwards just didn't

get it going in the first half. And so we go into halftime and I'm texting with you guys

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