Nuggets 3-pointers: Minnesota fans need to stop complaining about refs and start complaining about Rudy Gobert’s inability to guard Nikola Jokic

Initial observations from the Nuggets’ win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 3 of their first-round Western Conference playoffs matchup.

1. Not even refs could slow Nuggets down. Timberwolves media couldn’t stop whining on Twitter late Friday about phantom Nikola Jokic traveling calls. What about phantom fouls on the NBA MVP? Or Rudy Gobert’s attempts at defending him? Home cooking on the home court happens, but the free-throw disparity Friday night bordered on the absurd. While Minnesota fans shouted, “Refs, you (expletive)” for the hundredth time with 4:46 to go in a five-point game, the T-Pups had gone to the stripe 31 times to Denver’s seven. It still wasn’t enough. Anthony Edwards’ shoulder charge on Jamal Murray with 4:06 left in the game finally got the Nuggets in the bonus and started sucking the oxygen out of the hosts, who now trail 3-0 in the best-of-seven series. No NBA team has ever flipped a 3-0 deficit.

2. What can Brown do for you? Everything. Coming into Friday night, Nuggets super sub Bruce Brown had recorded a positive plus-minus number (plus-1 or higher) in 12 of his previous 18 playoff appearances going back to the spring of 2021. After three quarters, Brown had put up a plus-12 on Minnesota and his third quarter helped the visitors weather Jokic’s absence after the he got whistled for his fourth foul halfway through the quarter. Credit to Tim Connelly for getting this franchise back up off the mat and setting up foundational pieces in Jokic and Murray. And yet another high-five for Connelly’s successor, Calvin Booth, who inserted such savvy  pieces — Brown, Christian Braun, KCP — to finish off an NBA title contender. With 7:21 to go in the contest, the Nuggets’ bench had outscored Minnesota’s by a count of 29-8.

3. Riding the KCP roller-coaster, baby! If Charles Dickens was a Nuggets fan, he might have described the first half of Game 3 as the best of KCP times … followed by the worst of KCP times. Over the first 20 minutes and 40 seconds of the game, Nuggets guard Kentavius Caldwell-Pope poured in 10 points on 4-for-4 shooting. In the final 3:20 of the second quarter, he was 1 for 4 from the field, scored three points and committed a pair of turnovers. If not for some knucklehead moments over the last four minutes or so of the half, the T-Pups — and their home crowd — could’ve been completely buried early.