DENVER (AP) — Jaden McDaniels took perhaps his most notable shot after Minnesota's 119-114 playoff win at Denver in Game 2 on Monday night.
The Timberwolves forward pretty much labeled all the Nuggets' players bad defenders. Thrown in there were All-Stars Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray.
“Go after Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders,” said McDaniels, who had 14 points and three assists. "Tim Hardaway (Jr.), Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, the whole team, just go at them.”
So they're all bad defenders?
“Yeah, they’re all bad defenders,” McDaniels added.
The Timberwolves overcame a 19-point deficit to even the first-round series, which shifts to Minnesota for Game 3 on Thursday night. Anthony Edwards led the way with 30 points despite playing on a sore knee. He also had 10 rebounds.
“They don’t got people that can defend the rim,” McDaniels said. "We’re still more athletic than them and just got to be able to finish when we do.”
Jokic had 24 points and 15 rebounds — all on the defensive end — while Murray scored 30 points. But Denver's dynamic duo shot a combined 2 of 12 for four points in the fourth quarter. Murray had a chance to tie the game with a 3-pointer in the closing seconds but elected to pull up for a 2-point shot instead.
He missed.
“I was happy he took the two points,” Edwards said. “I thought he had a good look at a 3 when he first came off but yeah, he took the 2-pointer. I guess if he made it, we would have been in a free-throw situation. But yeah, I’m kind of happy he took the 2-pointer.”
Murray said he “didn't make enough shots tonight.”
"That’s really about it,” he added. "We all could have played better. It’s not all on one person, that’s just the way the game goes sometimes. They played hard as well. It was a good game. I thought we had the game in our hands, but we just didn’t make enough shots, in my opinion.”
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Minnesota Timberwolves forward Jaden McDaniels (3) drives to the basket against Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon (32) and Bruce Brown (11) during the second half in Game 2 of a first-round NBA playoffs basketball series Monday, April 20, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)
Minnesota Timberwolves Jaden McDaniels (3) drives to the basket against Denver Nuggets guard Christian Braun (0) during the second half in Game 2 of a first-round NBA playoffs basketball series Monday, April 20, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey) CORRECTION Correct to Julius Randle in stead of Julius Randle.
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, who was convicted of lying during testimony at the OJ Simpson murder trial, has died. He was 74.
Fuhrman was one of the first two police detectives sent to investigate the 1994 killings of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in Los Angeles. He reported finding a bloody glove at Simpson’s home but his credibility came under attack during the trial as the defense raised the prospect of racial bias.
Under cross-examination, Fuhrman testified that he had never made anti-Black racial slurs in the past decade, but a recording showed he had done so repeatedly.
Lynn Acebedo, the chief deputy coroner in Kootenai County, Idaho, said that Fuhrman died May 12. The county does not release the cause of death as a rule.
Alan Dershowitz, a prominent lawyer and law professor who was a legal strategist on Simpson’s defense “Dream Team,” said Fuhrman was a “much better detective than he was a witness.”
“He’s very smart, and you know, a very, very aggressive detective. Ultimately his actions helped us win the O.J. case because of his use of the ‘n’ word,” Dershowitz said Monday evening. “I got to know him later, after it was all over, and we had a cordial relationship.”
Fuhrman retired from the Los Angeles Police Department after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal. He subsequently moved to Idaho with his family and set up a 20-acre (eight-hectare) farm, raising chickens, goats, sheep and llamas.
In 1996, Fuhrman was charged with perjury and pleaded no contest. He later became a TV and radio commentator and wrote the book “Murder in Brentwood” about the killings.
A criminal-court jury found Simpson, a former star NFL running back and actor, not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to relatives of Brown and Goldman. He served nine years in prison on unrelated charges and died in Las Vegas of prostate cancer in 2024 at the age of 76.
Fuhrman’s father left when he was 7 years old, and Fuhrman often cared for his younger brother while his mother worked. As an adult, he joined the Marines and then the Los Angeles Police Department.
Golden reported from Seattle.
FILE - In this June 15, 1995 file photo, O.J. Simpson, left, grimaces as he tries on one of the leather gloves prosecutors say he wore the night his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered in a Los Angeles courtroom. (AP Photo/Sam Mircovich, Pool, File)
FILE - Los Angeles Police Department Det. Mark Fuhrman, foreground, and Superior Court Judge Lance Ito, rear, crane their heads to look at an overhead monitor during the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial, Friday, March 10, 1995, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
FILE - Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman shows the jury in the O.J. Simpson double murder trial evidence during testimony Friday, March 10, 1995, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, Pool, File)