After the Denver Nuggets Game 2 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, forward Jaden McDaniels effectively called out the entire Nuggets defense for being bad.

Asked about Minnesota’s game plan offensively, McDaniels didn’t mince words.

“Go at Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders. Tim Hardaway. Cam Johnson. Aaron Gordon. Their whole team … They’re all bad defenders.”

It’s rare to see a player call out another team so blatantly like that anymore, and the reaction was exactly as expected. Fans nationally agreed with McDaniels, specifically citing Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray as defense weak points. National analysts were surprised at the voracity of the comments and spoke of bulletin board material.

Asked on game night last Monday, Aaron Gordon said plainly: “I don’t care.”

Of course, it’s clear that the Nuggets as a whole do care. It struck something of a nerve, no matter what the Nuggets say about it publicly.

Three different people were asked today about it at practice: Christian Braun, Cam Johnson, and David Adelman. All of them had vastly different perspectives.

Braun focused on his team rather than respond directly.

“We’re not too worried about comments or what other people are saying…I think we just gotta handle the Denver Nuggets.”

“I don’t think it caught anybody off guard. He’s kind of speaking his truth and what he believes, and we’ll allow them to do that. We kind of want to take care of our own things and make sure we handle our business on our side.”

Johnson dismissed the comments outright.

“I’m not buying any of those antics. Period.”

“They just been saying a lot. All season, all series, so…yeah. Let them talk. Let them get everything they want off their chest. We’re cool with it.”

Adelman wasn’t having it and mostly disagreed with McDaniels’ assessment.

“I can’t wait for his podcast.”

“I think narrative is really interesting, too. You hear so many things, and we’ve gotten really lazy in society…What’s our defense rating in this series through two games? 109, right? 109 is really good.”

To Adelman’s point, the Nuggets currently rank fifth among all 20 teams to play in the postseason in defensive rating behind only the Oklahoma City Thunder, Orlando Magic, San Antonio Spurs, and Los Angeles Lakers (this is a Houston Rockets stat), according to Cleaning the Glass. There have been elements of Denver’s defense that have been good. Mostly, they’re defensive rebounding is great compared to other teams, though Adelman and the Nuggets today focused on being elite as a defensive rebounding group (even though they already are statistically).

Regardless of what the numbers say, the Timberwolves set out to attack Denver at the rim, force the Nuggets to bring help, and then hit some big threes late due to that tendency of over-helping. McDaniels may have said it in a sliiiightly more inflammatory way, but he’s right about some of Denver’s clear weaknesses. Despite ranking fifth among the 20 postseason teams in defensive rating, they rank below average in eFG% allowed, highlighted by an inability to force the Timberwolves away from shots directly at the rim or behind the arc. The Nuggets are allowing the third highest percentage of opponent shots near the rim, according to Cleaning the Glass.

So, is McDaniels right about the Nuggets? Is he wrong? It doesn’t really matter that much.

What matters more is that he blatantly called out the Nuggets and challenged their ability to get stops when it matters. Denver’s defense isn’t entirely what lost them Game 2. That was mostly about Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray missing shots. McDaniels had something to do with that and can see the difference in how Denver defends vs how Minnesota has guarded the best two-man game in the NBA.

We will see how motivated the Nuggets are for Game 3 and whether the intensity of the game matches the comments made.