Nickeil Alexander-Walker could not stop beaming as he took a moment to consider how far he has come.

He was a throw-in in the 2023 trade that sent D’Angelo Russell from Minnesota to the Los Angeles Lakers and Mike Conley and Alexander-Walker from Utah to the Timberwolves. At that point in his career, he had been traded three times and was hanging on to a spot in the league by his fingernails.

Flash forward two-plus seasons later and there he is playing in the fourth quarter of a tense rivalry game against the Denver Nuggets with Wolves coach Chris Finch, who was an assistant in New Orleans when Alexander-Walker was a Pelicans rookie, calling plays for him as they mount a comeback.

“Me and Finchy have come a long way,” Alexander-Walker said. “I’ll take anything I can get. For me, it was a moment, you know? Like a passing of the torch or something, like we transcended into another level of our relationship.”

Alexander-Walker is the deep thinker on the Timberwolves, and that has not always been a good thing. Earlier in his career, he could tie himself in knots while obsessing over his place in the league, his role on the floor and, no joke, the meaning of life. Ever since he reunited with Finch in Minnesota, he has found a way to harness all of that brain activity, shed the weight that was holding him back and become an essential part of a team that very much sees itself as a threat in the Western Conference.

When the Wolves were dead in the water, down 10 points with 3 minutes, 36 seconds to play and struggling to find anything that was working on either end, Finch went to Alexander-Walker in search of a lift. He responded with two 3-pointers, two steals and two free throws during a 15-2 closing kick that lifted the Wolves to a 119-116 victory on Friday night.

🏹 NAW 🏹 pic.twitter.com/TH252oHYDB

— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) November 2, 2024

It was a fiery, rowdy, back-and-forth affair on national television that encapsulated the intensity of this rivalry.

Rudy Gobert threw down with Christian Braun after Braun dunked on him earlier in the fourth quarter. Later, Gobert got revenge with a strong contest of Braun at the rim and two clutch free throws. Anthony Edwards hit seven 3s, was patient in the fourth when Denver loaded up on him and then delivered what was essentially the game-winner on a floater in the lane. Aaron Gordon went bananas for Denver, hitting five 3s and scoring 31 points to put the Nuggets in position for what would have been an impressive road victory.

But this was the NAW game. The eighth man in the Wolves rotation has been the most consistent player on the team during this jagged start to the season. The Wolves needed even more than that from him in the most dire moments on Friday night. He scored all eight of his points during that flurry, had five assists, zero turnovers and was a plus-27 in 24 minutes.

“Nothing was going right. He brought defense. He brought toughness,” said Edwards, who finished with 29 points and four assists. “He plays hard every time he checks in the game.”

It was an important win for the Timberwolves (3-2). They have yet to find the same chemistry and cohesion from a season ago while incorporating new faces Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo into the lineup and getting used to life without Karl-Anthony Towns. The biggest adjustment has been on defense, where they miss Towns’ size and rebounding and were blasted by the Nuggets to the tune of 19 second-chance points off of 17 offensive rebounds. They also gave up 22 fast-break points.

But Alexander-Walker and Gobert helped deliver Minnesota’s best stretch of defense in this young season over the final four minutes of the fourth quarter when the Nuggets went 0 of 6 from the field with three turnovers.

“Energy just changes when he comes into the game,” Finch said of Alexander-Walker.

Alexander-Walker can become a free agent at the end of this season, and the uncertainty about his financial future coupled with the Wolves’ acquisition of another 3-and-D wing in DiVincenzo just before training camp could have sent him into a mental tailspin. He was shaky in the preseason while dutifully trying to play point guard to lighten the burden on 37-year-old Mike Conley.

“He’s a very intelligent. He’s extremely worldly,” Finch said. “He has a tendency to overthink. When he overthinks things, he gets harder on himself. A lot of the honesty that we have is getting back to basics and reminding him how he’s been so successful for us.”

Finch and the coaching staff assured NAW that they had others who could handle the point guard responsibilities and that he should focus on what he does best — playing great defense and knocking down shots. There were times earlier in his career when Alexander-Walker would have let the advice go in one ear and out the other. But the 26-year-old new father sees things differently now.

“I saw his struggles firsthand,” Finch said of his time in New Orleans. “He was in a place where, when you tried to help him, he just wouldn’t listen because he was so fixated on doing certain things and playing a certain way.”

Alexander-Walker is much more coachable now because he has learned how to release the pressure. Rather than being burdened by the expectations that come with the NBA, he instead derives encouragement that he is one of the few players who can say they made it to the highest level. It has given him peace of mind, but even that comes at a cost.

Alexander-Walker said this was one of the first games in recent memory that he did not have jitters as he walked into the arena. He said he “worried a little bit” that the relaxation would cause him to be lackadaisical and not play with an edge. Then he went out and ignited his Wolves to a hard-fought comeback win over a bitter division foe.

“It’s probably the most focused and driven I’ve been in my life for a bigger purpose outside of myself and my family,” he said.

The Timberwolves and Nuggets played 20 times in the previous two seasons, including Denver’s five-game playoff series win in 2023 and Minnesota’s seven-game thriller last season. A rivalry has formed in the pressure cooker, which was clear at the end of Game 7 last season when Nikola Jokić had some choice words for Edwards as he waved to the Denver crowd and Jaden McDaniels was fouled hard when he tried a dunk in the closing moments.

“What do they say, familiarity breeds contempt?” Denver coach Michael Malone said. “I’m sure they don’t like us. We don’t like them. They beat us last year. But you have a healthy respect for who they are, what they’ve done.”

The dynamics have changed rather significantly since the last time these two teams met. The Nuggets said goodbye to starting wing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, elevated Braun and brought in Russell Westbrook and Dario Šarić to add some much-needed punch off the bench.

The Wolves made a more drastic change, trading Towns to New York for Randle and DiVincenzo. The newly configured roster is much more conventional than the big lineup they deployed with Towns and Gobert in the frontcourt. The size made the Wolves a difficult matchup for Denver. Finch would put Towns on Jokić and have Gobert roam off of Gordon to protect the rim, which made it much more challenging for the Nuggets to get clean looks.

Towns always seemed to save his best defensive performances for his games against the MVP. No one stops him, but Towns used his 7-foot, 250-pound frame to make Jokić work harder on the offensive end. When matched up against Gobert, Jokić had his way. But against Towns, nothing came as easy.

Randle plays with plenty of physicality at power forward, but at 6 foot 9, he doesn’t have the height that Towns does.

Gobert took the bulk of the duty on Jokić on Friday night with Reid and Randle both getting cracks at him as well. Jokić finished with 26 points, 13 assists and nine rebounds, stellar numbers to be sure. But for a player who scored at least 40 in two of the first four games, limiting him to 16 shot attempts and forcing three turnovers from him constitutes a win.

The Wolves led by as many as 16 points, gashing Denver’s lackluster second unit and seeming to be well on their way to an easy win when they went up 12 with 11 minutes to play. But these teams know each other too well for things not to get crazy.

The Nuggets pounded the offensive glass and stormed back into the lead, and the game erupted when Braun threw down a soaring dunk over the defending NBA Defensive Player of the Year.

Christian Braun and Rudy Gobert got into it after this play.

Double technical fouls were assessed. pic.twitter.com/lSCC7J4sNY

— ESPN (@espn) November 2, 2024

He let out a primal scream right in Gobert’s face and then put a shoulder into him, and Gobert responded with force. Double technical fouls were issued.

“He made a great play and there’s always the adrenaline,” Gobert said. “He kind of stepped toward my space and nothing happened, but it’s part of the game.”

Gobert made it clear that he harbored no ill will toward Braun, saying that he had great respect for his competitiveness and intensity. Braun said there was nothing malicious about the play, just emotions from a highlight against one of the best defensive players in the history of the league.

“The reason I get so hyped up after that is, that’s the best rim protector in the NBA,” Braun told the media in the Denver locker room. “So making a play on the best rim protector in the NBA doesn’t happen often.”

Rather than get rattled, Gobert steeled himself. With the Wolves clinging to a 117-116 lead, Gobert met Braun at the rim again, this time forcing a miss on his driving layup attempt. He grabbed the rebound and knocked down two free throws and then made sure Jokić did not get a clean look at a 3-pointer on Denver’s final possession.

“I love those moments, and obviously playing against a player like Jokić who was the MVP of the league last year and one of the all-time best players, I look forward to those games and those challenges,” Gobert said.

Gobert had 17 points, 14 rebounds and two blocks, Randle added 23 points, seven assists and six boards and Reid scored 16 on 7-of-10 shooting. Most importantly, the Wolves had to dig deep to get a win. They left Target Center late Friday night and headed to San Antonio for a Saturday game, believing that the comeback could be exactly what this team needs to get going.

“We need those wins to get confidence in who we are, especially with a new group,” Gobert said. “We’ve still got to learn from the mistakes that we made today in those stretches, but at the same time, we know that regardless of what happens during the game we’re going to keep playing. We’re never going to give up, and that’s a championship mindset that we need to have.”

(Photo of Nickeil Alexander-Walker: David Sherman / NBAE via Getty Images)