So, Nuggets fans. About that “this is the year” thing.
You had reasons to believe. Jokić is still the best player on the planet. Murray was healthy heading into the playoffs. The roster around them was supposed to be deeper than last year. You looked at the bracket, looked at the West, and convinced yourself this was finally the redemption arc after that 2024 second-round exit. Some of you probably had a Finals scenario already mapped out by Game 1.
And now you are down 3-1 to Minnesota. To a Timberwolves team that lost Anthony Edwards in the second quarter. To a Timberwolves team that lost Donte DiVincenzo 71 seconds in to a torn Achilles. You are down 3-1 because Ayo Dosunmu, a guy your team probably didn’t game-plan for in the preseason scouting report, dropped 43 points off the bench at Target Center on a Saturday night.
Forty-three. Off. The. Bench.
Let me give you the kind of stat that should ruin your weekend. According to the NBA, the last time a player came off the bench in a playoff game and scored more than this was 1976. Fred Brown. Forty-five points. The Bicentennial year. Carter was about to be elected president. That is the company Ayo Dosunmu just joined.
The Nuggets, in their own words, are cooked
Let’s just look at the numbers and try to keep our composure here.
| Stat | Game 4 |
|---|---|
| Final score | Wolves 112, Nuggets 96 |
| Series | Minnesota leads 3-1 |
| Dosunmu’s line | 43 PTS, 13-of-17 FG, 5-of-5 from three, 12-of-12 FT |
| Dosunmu’s minutes | 42 (off the bench) |
| Wolves bench points | 76 |
| Edwards’ minutes before injury | 18 |
| DiVincenzo’s minutes before injury | About one |
Read that bench points number again. Seventy-six. The Wolves’ bench scored almost as many points as Denver’s entire starting lineup, which according to NBA.com put up 76 from the starters. That is your Christmas Day rival’s bench. With Ant in the locker room. With DiVincenzo in a walking boot. That is how the night went.
And here is the part that should keep Mike Malone up at night, except he is not the coach anymore, so it is David Adelman’s problem now. Per NBA.com, only 4.4% of teams in NBA history have come back from a 3-1 deficit in a best-of-seven. That is 13 out of 298. Yes, the 2016 Cavs are on that list. No, this is not the 2016 Cavs. This is a Nuggets team where Murray went 10-of-25 and Jokić went 8-of-22 in Game 4. Your two stars combined to shoot under 39%. Against a backup guard.
Wait, who is Ayo Dosunmu again?
Quick refresher for the casuals, because if you watched a lot of late-night Bulls games over the past few years you already know. Dosunmu was a second-round pick by Chicago in 2021. Illinois product. Solid rotation guy on those DeMar DeRozan-Zach LaVine teams that nobody outside of Chicago really watched because the games started at 8 p.m. central and the Bulls were always the seventh seed.
Then Chicago hit the bottom of their cycle, ran the trade deadline fire sale, and Minnesota grabbed him. Per memory’s stat-line, since arriving with the Wolves he is averaging 15.6 points, 4 rebounds, and 3.6 assists. Solid. Useful. The kind of mid-rotation guy you forget about until April.
You are not forgetting about him now.
And here is the part that should really hurt, Denver
Are you sitting down? Pour yourself something strong first.
Back in September, before the trade deadline, before any of this happened, Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale floated a three-team mock trade scenario that had your name all over it. The idea was Denver acquires Ayo Dosunmu and Justin Champagnie from the Chicago Bulls. In return, the Bulls get Zeke Nnaji, Peyton Watson, a 2026 second-round pick, and a 2028 first-round swap with top-10 protection from Denver. The Washington Wizards collect a 2032 second-round pick from the Nuggets to grease the wheels. Clean, neat, and reasonable.
The pitch reasoning was that Denver desperately needed a guard who could create his own shot, take some pressure off Murray and Jokić, and provide rotational scoring punch. Sound familiar? Like, exactly the thing that just dropped 43 on you in Game 4? Yeah. That guy.
Instead, Denver stood pat. Minnesota pounced at the deadline. And now you are watching the player who was hypothetically yours torch you in your own first-round exit, while Peyton Watson and Zeke Nnaji are still on your bench, presumably watching the same telecast. The basketball gods have a sick sense of humor. They really do.
Cole’s hot take, served piping hot
Here is what gets me about this Game 4. The narrative coming in was supposed to be about Edwards going supernova. About Jokić authoring another impossible playoff run. About Murray hitting one of those daggers he hits in May. Instead, the defining player of this series, with the Wolves one win away from advancing, is a guy who was coming off the bench for the Bulls four months ago.
Julius Randle, who is having a really fun playoffs himself, basically told reporters he had no idea Dosunmu was this good. Quote, via Bleacher Report and a few other places: “I didn’t know he was that damn good. I ain’t gonna lie to you.” Translation: even his teammates are surprised.
Brett Siegel, an NBA insider over at ClutchPoints, called Dosunmu the best trade deadline addition any team has made in the last decade. The last decade. That is a wild thing to say in April, except, look, the man has scored 68 points combined across Games 3 and 4 on 71.9% shooting. Off the bench. In the playoffs. With his team’s All-Star and starting two-guard both on the shelf.
Remember when we used to have these debates about which team got the best deadline get? Last year it felt like Memphis with Marcus Smart. The year before that it was Brooklyn moving KD and somehow winning the conceptual trade. This year, four months later, the answer is “Minnesota for Ayo Dosunmu” and nobody is going to argue about it for the next eighteen months.
So what happens now
Game 5 is in Denver. Edwards’ status is, in the technical NBA injury-report parlance, “unclear.” DiVincenzo is gone. The Wolves are still up 3-1 because, according to ESPN’s win probability chart and basically every analyst with a microphone, you cannot give back a 3-1 lead in 2026. Cleveland did it once. The 2025 Pacers were chasing one and fell short. The math is the math.
But let me give the Nuggets one piece of credit. If they win Game 5 at home, push it to a Game 6 in Minnesota, then somehow grab a Game 7 in Denver, this becomes one of the great chokes in recent playoff memory. Or one of the great comebacks. Same coin, different sides.
The more likely scenario? Monday night in Denver, the Wolves close it out. Naz Reid hits a couple of threes. Rudy Gobert blocks Jokić one more time. And the Nuggets, who came into April thinking this was finally the year, go home a round earlier than anyone outside of Minneapolis predicted.
I thought this was the year too, Denver. Turns out it was Ayo’s.
Bottom line
Dosunmu’s 43 was the second-most points off the bench in NBA playoff history, the most in over 50 years, and the dagger in a Game 4 where Minnesota took a 3-1 series lead despite losing two starters. The Nuggets need to win three straight, two on the road, against a team whose backup guard just played like an All-Star. Good luck with that.
