Denver Nuggets have lost 5 straight to Minnesota Timberwolves, but have beaten the Warriors in 9 straight games. The West playoffs are all about matchups.

Outside of OKC who are a clear favorite in the West, the West playoffs this year will all come down to matchups between other teams, and that will determine who is able to make a WCF/Finals push. Here are some examples.

So as everyone knows Minnesota has pretty much owned Denver going back to Game 6 of last year's playoffs, and they look like they have figured out a lot of things in that matchup. They get physical on defense and take out Murray/MPJ, have Gobert make it somewhat difficult for Jokic, and then on offense Anthony Edwards exposes Denver's weak POA defense and Jokic's weak rim protection. Now when Minnesota faces a team with better rim protection like Memphis Anthony Edwards might have more trouble, and Minnesota will be forced to relegate to a pull up jump shot offense something they struggled with against Dallas's rim protection last year.

Then the Warriors, for example, have lost 9 straight against Denver going back to the start of 2022-2023 season, and with their "full" small ball looks its very unlikely they will be able to challenge Jokic and Denver in the playoffs. No matter what tactics they use, they will simply lack personnel to stop Denver's paint points on the defensive end.

Then, with the Lakers its hard to tell right now, as they still have a developing team with Luka Doncic but there will also certainly be bad and good matchups, and a lot will simply come down to how Luka plays as he still doesn't look 100%. Like they might have trouble against OKC if Luka Doncic can't get anything going against OKC's defense and Lu Dort similar to his recent matchups against them. And lastly, most other teams want to probably face Houston/Memphis in the playoffs.

So overall outside of OKC the west is pretty wide open and is all about matchups, and as far as OKC goes Denver with Jokic might still be the worst matchup for them but it wouldn't be surprising if teams like MIN, GSW can also challenge them.