The Minnesota Timberwolves evened their series against the Denver Nuggets 1-1 Tuesday night with a 119-114 victory that showed off not only the diversity of Minnesota's talent, but tested their connectivity and ability to stay steady in big moments.

Anthony Edwards led with 30 points followed by Julius Randle with 24. Randle came through in a big way late in the game as he found his rhythm and brought a second spark of life to the Minnesota offense. 

Things didn't start out positive for the Timberwolves, though. The Nuggets looked connected at the beginning of the game and jumped ahead to a 39-25 lead at the end of the first quarter.

Minnesota fixed that deficit just as quickly. The Timberwolves matched the Nuggets by outscoring Denver 39-24 to take the game into halftime tied. While the Timberwolves looked rattled by the way that they fell behind so quickly, they adjusted just as quickly to keep Denver from grabbing a blowout-worthy lead.

"I thought we just kept our composure with a lot of things," head coach Chris Finch said (via Timberwolves). "Things settled down, we just chipped into the lead slowly... Guys did a really good job, Julius [Randle] came to life and we found really good offensive rhythm that carried us once we started having that connectivity."

Standing up to adversity and still managing to perform is an essential skill in any NBA game, but it's even more important in the playoffs. While a seven-game series offers teams more grace than a single-elimination, it's not a huge time frame for teams to feel comfortable with giving games away.

The Timberwolves couldn't afford to let the Nuggets take both of the first two games and head back to Minnesota in a deficit, but they made the adjustments needed to overcome the Denver onslaught.

The biggest adjustment they made was taking over the inside of the paint. They were mostly shut down under the hoop in the first quarter and relegated themselves to the perimeter, where their shots weren't landing.

From the second quarter onward, they were much more aggressive on their drives and took advantage of fast breaks to steadily climb up the board with layups. 

Their pace and connectivity paid off as they made a run in the final minutes of the game to finally build some distance from Denver and eventually finish the game on top. 

They're riding the momentum of hard-fought win back into their home stadium for game three gives them more of an advantage, even if the series is tied.