Defending champions the Nuggets are officially out of the championship race after getting eliminated in Game 7 at the hands of the Timberwolves.
Incredibly, the T-Wolves came back from 20 points down to win the game – the biggest Game 7 comeback in the play-by-play era (1997-1998).
Nikola Jokic finished the game with 34 points, 19 rebounds, seven assists on 46.4 percent shooting from the field, but it wasn’t enough.
He made sure to give his opponents their flowers after the game and also discussed if they are a potential rival of the Nuggets.
“I mean yes, I think they’re built to beat us in some ways,” Jokic said. “I mean , just look at their roster – they have basically two All-Stars, two probably first defensive players o the year, Mike Conley who is the most underrated player in the NBA probably. I mean, he’s so good. He didn’t shoot as well this game. In one moment he was the leading rebounder in the game for them so. And then form the bench they have Sixth Man of the Year, they have Kyle and Walker who is really good for them so. One thing that team that can do literally everything: they can be big, small, so.”
Nuggets coach Michael Malone wasn’t quite as complimentary as Jokic, and was very dismissive of the reporter who asked him the question, “How hard is it absorb a loss like this after going up by 20?”
To which Malone clapped back with, “Next question man. The seasons over. That’s what’s hard. Fu*k being up by 2. The seasons over. You don’t understand that. The season’s over; it’s hard. Stupid ass questions.”
Later on in the press conference, Malone seemed to soften when asked about the effort given from his players, which he couldn’t fault.
“I think mentally emotionally physically, guys are gassed. They’re dead tired. They gave me everything I could ever ask for and that’s why as much as this hurts, I will walk out of this building tonight with my head held very high. Cause we competed, we fought. We gave ourselves a chance and we came up short and thats going to happen at times. No one ever said this was gong to easy trying to repeat and I guess that we just gotta improve, across the board, get better and come back even stronger.”
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