DENVER — In the hallways underneath Ball Arena after completing his last day of tedious but essential prep for Anthony Edwards, Christian Braun needed to let out some pent-up anticipation.

“I’m tired of waiting,” the Denver Nuggets guard shared with nobody in particular on his way into the locker room. “It’s (expletive) playoff time, mother-(expletives).”

It might as well have been a thesis statement for his entire team’s headspace. The Nuggets live a charmed life, boasting the longest active streak of NBA playoff appearances in the Western Conference, and it can cause the dog days of the regular season to feel burdensome. Their annual struggle is to resist auto-pilot — especially at the end of the floor that requires more effort. Combine their human instinct and an unusually contagious injury bug this season, and the result was a bottom-10 defense in the NBA for the second consecutive year.

It didn’t show in Game 1 against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

In what felt like an upside down start to the playoffs, the best 3-point shooting team in the league overcame a 1 for 17 second half with disciplined guarding. Braun took the lead on Edwards, and Denver held an opponent to 105 points or fewer for just the 15th time this year.

“Which is something we’ve been crying about the whole season,” Spencer Jones said, laughing. “So to be able to do it first game of the playoffs shows the intensity we can play at, and play at it consistently.”

The Nuggets shot 43.7% from the field and 27.8% from deep, their second-lowest clip of the year in a win. They were 15-22 in the regular season when they shot any worse than 49% overall, a sign of the strain they put on their historic offense nightly.

Defensive stops were manufactured up and down the lineup. Bruce Brown was Denver’s amplifier, compiling five steals off the bench in his first playoff game as a Nugget since the 2023 championship clincher. “Some guys might get mad at me, but I think he’s our most effective on-ball defender,” Jamal Murray said. “When he comes in, he’s up underneath guys. He’s not even fouling. And if he does foul, it’s stopping them from getting two points.”

Nuggets coach David Adelman praised him for “toeing the line that you need to toe in the playoffs.”

Aaron Gordon was predictably formidable as the primary matchup on Julius Randle, who never established a groove while scoring an inefficient 16 points. The Nuggets allowed less than a point per possession in 29 minutes with Gordon on the floor.

When he got in early foul trouble, Jones and Cam Johnson helped weather the storm against Minnesota’s offensive-minded fours, Randle and Naz Reid. Johnson displayed his understated versatility as an isolation defender throughout the series opener, forcing Randle and Edwards into tough shots despite mainly taking the Jaden McDaniels assignment. “Trying to bother the handle a little bit,” Johnson said. “Don’t let them get super rhythmic with it, because that’s when guys get comfy and hit shots.”

Nikola Jokic played his vintage up-to-touch ball screen coverage, giving Braun time to recover to Edwards when Minnesota wanted to put Jokic in the action (which was often). His defensive effort has been justifiably scrutinized at times this season, but the context is crucial. Denver’s new coaching regime — Adelman as the head man, Jared Dudley as his defensive coordinator — prefers to play the long game.

Their philosophy from the start was to devise a scheme that could help save Jokic’s legs for playoff basketball. They wanted him hanging out around the paint more during the regular season, despite his shortcomings as a rim protector. They didn’t want him to overexert himself with too much aggressive pick-and-roll defense, like he has typically played over the years to capitalize on his quick hands and high IQ. They’ve put him in a drop more often, or at the bottom of a zone, or they’ve they sought out cross-matches against non-shooters. “I don’t want him having him to go guard these guards on the wings, in rotations,” Dudley told The Denver Post early in the season.

It was all in anticipation of this. Physical and mental fatigue played a factor in Denver’s last two season-ending losses, both second-round Game 7s. The sense around the team this year is that Jokic feels fresh. Adelman stumped for him after Game 1, pointing out unprompted that Jokic “was up (the floor) in pick-and-roll, like, 65 times. I know he gets killed defensively. But man, he’s in good shape.”

And at the center of this “grimy” series-opening win was Braun, who shouldered the Ant matchup that he’s grown all too familiar with in recent years. Edwards led the Timberwolves in scoring (22), but he looked nothing like his usual self in a labored 7 for 19 performance. Part of that may have been due to lingering runner’s knee; he had an opportunity to attack Murray in space on a late fourth-quarter possession, but as the Nuggets loaded up with help behind Murray, Edwards settled for a deep 3-point attempt instead of driving and kicking to an open teammate.

Part of it was Braun, who has the liberty to switch strategies on his own from possession to possession, Adelman said. The fourth-year guard, who turned 25 the day before the playoffs, has been growing more comfortable playing on his left ankle in the second half of the season. It still gets swollen and requires extra postgame treatment, residual effects of the ligament damage caused by a severe sprain last November.

“I thought CB was great,” Adelman said. “He’s guarding one of the best players in the world. … With Ant, you have to have somebody guarding him that will change up their own coverages sometimes. Take responsibility to not give him the same look every time. … You can trust CB that what he’s doing, there’s a reason for it. I realized this last year in the playoffs, when he really had an enormous role guarding the better players with (James) Harden then on to Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander). You can trust him. Not all players are like that.”

Braun emerged as one of the Nuggets’ best Ant defenders during the 2024 playoffs, when Kentavious Caldwell-Pope struggled in the matchup. He left Denver in free agency that offseason, leaving a job opening in the starting lineup. Braun seized it, becoming the team’s lead defensive guard. He’s taken on most of the NBA’s premiere ball-handlers over the last two years, experiencing ups and downs as an over-screen defender in pick-and-roll. But he has grown accustomed to the mental resilience it takes to guard superstars in a league where good offense tends to trump good defense. He’s startlingly honest when he feels an opponent “kicked my (butt),” as Harden did in Game 1 of the playoffs last season.

“It was probably his best game of the series,” Braun recalled Saturday. “Then I kind of learned and I adjusted. I think in Game 7, obviously we took care of business and did a really good job on him. I think as the series went on, we kept me on him more and more. … I’m gonna learn what Ant does throughout the series, and it’s a series for a reason.”

Which is all to say, Braun and the Nuggets know they’re in no place to take a victory lap after one game of good defense.

Harden had 32 points and 11 assists in that Game 1. He fizzled out by Game 7, scoring seven points on eight shots.

The opposite trajectory is just as feasible, if Braun allows Edwards to get too comfortable on his knee as this series develops.

“Just be annoying the whole game,” Jokic said.

The entire roster took that edict to heart in Game 1, and the Timberwolves buckled under the pressure. McDaniels shoved Jokic in the back and picked up a dead ball technical foul. Randle failed to hustle back into the play after Denver snatched an offensive rebound on a 45-foot heave with two minutes left. Gordon punished him for his poor effort by getting wide open for a dunk. Then Randle committed two frustration fouls in an 11-second span as the game spiraled out of control for Minnesota. Wolves coach Chris Finch criticized his team’s lack of composure.

It stemmed from a Denver defense that had been hibernating for months, counting on its ability to suddenly jolt awake in April. It’s a risky blueprint, but it worked in Game 1.

“They tried to bully us a little bit in the front. We knew that was gonna happen. That’s how this team tries to get under our skin,” Jones said. “So for us to match it from beginning to end and never give in, and see them be the ones to kind of complain to the refs more than we were — it shows how focused we were.”

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