MINNEAPOLIS — The Nuggets had delusions of adequacy.

They aspired to choke. They never led long enough to gag.

Instead, they spent Thursday night at the Target Center desperate and dismantled.

They blew a prime opportunity to force a winner-take-all cagematch Saturday in Denver by blowing chunks in the biggest game of the season.

The Nuggets stared into the eyes of a pack of Wolves, and blinked. They botched a chance to make a run at second championship by getting bounced by a team missing three of its top players.

The easy explanation is that Jaden McDaniels walked the talk, and Jamal Murray couldn’t make a shot. That can suffice for this game, in a vacuum. But the reality of the series is more chilling.

In four of the six games, as a season expired in the first round for the first time since 2022, the Nuggets were not good enough.

They were outcoached, David Adelman playing the role of a pawn in Chris Finch’s weeklong chess game. They were outhustled, the Timberwolves winning on the offensive boards in such alarming fashion that they had 19 more field-goal attempts than the Nuggets.

It was fitting in a series where the Timberwolves took successful shots on and off the court. McDaniels called five Nuggets players horrible defenders, mentioning them by name like a teacher taking attendance. Finch labeled Murray and Nikola Jokic floppers.

And the Nuggets took it. Every single slight. Every wayward elbow. Every punch.

They finally fought back in Game 5, but by that time they had been embarrassed, their heart questioned. When Nikola Jokic answered a fourth-quarter push from Jaylen Clark on Thursday with an impressive shove, it spawned more questions than answers.

Why wasn’t this mindset present after the Nuggets blew a 19-point lead in Game 2?

Instead, the Nuggets exited early, guaranteeing this game will be remembered as one of the worst performances, and the series as the most humiliating.

The Timberwolves exposed the Nuggets as a fraud, a vapid former champion left as a chew toy in the mouth of hungry Wolves.

So bad was this loss, so awful this series collapse, everything must be on the table.

After getting bounced with a better bench and Murray enjoying a career season, some tough conversations must happen, some difficult choices made.

First, the easy one. Jokic is not going anywhere. He reiterated that he still wants to be a “Nugget forever.” That means he should agree to a contract extension.

But what is he signing up for? The championship window feels closed. It does not require squinting to see Jokic morphing into Giannis Antetokounmpo with the Bucks, a former MVP playing off Broadway with a revolving cast of overpaid underachievers.

Without changes, there is no reason to think the Nuggets will be better next year. Sure, they could win more games because they are unlikely to set the single-season record for soft tissue injuries in back-to-back seasons. But it doesn’t mean the playoffs will look different.

If you haven’t noticed the two-man game, patented by Jokic and Murray, has been exposed and thwarted by elite defenses in the last three years they have been eliminated, twice by Minnesota and once by Oklahoma City. Those teams are younger, more athletic. And San Antonio might be better than both of them with Victor Wembanyama set to go on an MVP run for the ages.

The Nuggets looked old, tired. The effort was present. The execution was not. Murray capsulized the flaws by going 4 for 17 and finishing with 12 points.

“It’s on me,” he said. “That’s the frustrating part. Not showing up when my team needed me most. I feel like if I had played a little better that we would have had that game. I take accountability for it. Rough night.”

So as Nuggets Nation wades through the dread and the disappointment, president Josh Kroenke has to be prepared to ask tough questions.

First, is David Adelman the right man for the job? He did himself no favors, getting led around by the nose by Finch at the podium and on the sidelines. An offensive genius in the regular season, who kept the Nuggets relevant despite an overcrowded training room, Adelman looked uncertain against Minnesota.

He waited too long to lengthen his bench, and even after The Other Guys starred in Game 5, he struggled to commit to them on Thursday. Malone got fired because he picked a fight he couldn’t win with general manager Calvin Booth and his players tuned him out.

The Nuggets players clearly like Adelman. But their praise of him smacks more like friendship than respect, and that has to change if he is going to keep the job.

Jokic admitted that in Serbia, players and coaches would get fired for a performance like this. But he was not calling for that on Thursday.

“It is not (Adelman’s) fault that we couldn’t rebound. It his not his fault that couldn’t catch the ball,” Jokic said. “There’s nothing to blame with David Adelman. It was all us.”

That is why the group must change. The timing is right to be bold. Of the trio of Aaron Gordon, Cam Johnson and Christian Braun, the Nuggets must consider moving on from two of them. Some would even throw Murray into the mix, but I don’t see it.

Gordon is Mr. Nugget. A fan favorite. His leg injuries and contract, however, are becoming problematic. They would be selling low. It is just getting increasingly hard to see him getting healthier at age 31 next season based on how the last calendar year played out.

Johnson met the moment on Thursday, scoring 27 points. He worked through slumps and showed his value. He became philosophical and emotional after the game, recognizing it might have been his last with the Nuggets, while clearly not wanting it to be.

The argument to trade Johnson centers on keeping Peyton Watson. He is 23, and blossomed this season as more than a spot-up shooter and shot blocker. With the Bulls and Lakers among the teams that will likely throw money at him, Watson will not be easy to keep.

It must be a priority.

Braun was trending upward when he received his contract extension in October — one that I approved of — before an ankle issue wrecked his season. He was borderline unplayable in this series, his explosiveness and 3-point shooting glaringly absent.

The best way for the Nuggets to improve is to leave chunks of this group behind, to fundamentally alter the fabric. It would be worth taking a step back next year to get younger, to reframe expectations with the plan to make one more championship run by 2029.

That is not a good option. But a loss has rarely felt his bad.

The fourth quarter ended with the crowd chanting “M-V-P!” for McDaniels and “F-U!” Jokic. Even if the Nuggets had somehow found their courage and won this series, the Spurs would have boxed their ears.

It is why they must weigh seismic changes. The Nuggets are not good enough.

And moving forward, anything is better than this.

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