Arizona Basketball alum Aaron Gordon helps power Nuggets to equalizer vs. Timberwolves

First half review

Gordon got his night started early, scoring his first points on the Nuggets' first 3-pointer of the night from 23 feet out before three minutes had passed in the opening quarter. His next points came on a driving layup to cut Denver's deficit to 20-15.

By the second quarter, Gordon started getting active. He logged an assist on a Christian Braun basket, stole the ball out of Jaden McDaniels' hands, and assisted on Justin Holiday's 3-pointer on three back-to-back plays before a minute and a half had elapsed. By the time he scored next, Denver was up 39-26 with 10:02 remaining before the half.

Gordon spent four minutes on the bench before re-entering with five minutes left in the half. He broke the Nuggets' near 2-and-a-half-minute scoring drought with a slam dunk to put Denver up 11 points. After getting an assist from Jokic on his dunk, he dished out an assist for Jokic to slam a dunk of his own. With two minutes left in the half, he grabbed Jamal Murray's missed shot and slammed it home for his second dunk of the game.

Second half push

The Nuggets held a 15-point lead coming out of halftime, and Gordon nailed two jump shots in the first three minutes of the second half. Just a minute later, he cleaned up Kentavious Caldwell-Pope's miss with yet another dunk to move the lead back to 78-63.

Gordon then went quiet for the next few minutes besides an assist on a Holiday 3-pointer. As the quarter was winding down, he got sent to the line and nailed both his free-throw attempts to close out his contributions to the third quarter.

Gordon started the fourth quarter on the bench, clocking in with 9:03 remaining in the game. As the Timberwolves were trying to climb back into the game, Gordon dished out an assist to Braun on the 3-pointer that put them over 100 total points and then added to his own box score with a 16-footer that put Denver up 103-90.

Gordon didn't miss his first (and only) shot until deep in the fourth quarter, when he whiffed on a jumper from nine feet out with 3:39 remaining. He made up for it in short order, though, dropping the slam hammer on the Timberwolves 20 seconds later to conclude his scoring for the night. His last contribution of the night was an assist on an exclamatory Jokic dunk with about 25 seconds left.