The Timberwolves Are Squeezing the Life Out of the Nuggets

Getty Images/Associated Press/Ringer illustration Minnesota's defensive tour de force rendered Denver unrecognizable in Game 2, which felt like an emphatic arrival for the Wolves and a new nadir for the defending champs On a spectrum of visibility, defense in modern basketball falls somewhere between the panic-inducing speed and punishing force of football and the algorithmic erasure-by-numbers of soccer. Every possession in basketball has a higher probability of yielding points than in any other team sport, so the viewer's mind paces itself. We look for punctuations and aberrations. End points that affirm or deny the intentions of a defense. A weak-side rejection from the low man; a block from the darting rotational defender closing out on the corner; a strip-block from the mouse in the house, whose reflexes are faster than the post player's offensive navigation system. Moments, few and far between, that turn the improbable into the ecstatic. For the most part, that's all one can truly hope for. Great offenses operate like superorganisms, with a flow that can be impossible to decipher from the opposing perspective; great defenses come in crashing waves. But on Monday, in the most...