Wolves center Naz Reid, his broken left hand still in a cast, covered up his head in the final moments of Friday night’s loss to Denver at Target Center. (Aaron Lavinsky, Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

We have entered the age of overanalysis.

Somewhere, today, there is a report on the Nuggets-Timberwolves series filled with advanced statistics and mathematical formulas that make simple sentences look more like Cyrillic than English.

Analytics are valuable. Statistics are essential. Sometimes, though, you don't need a supercomputer to figure out why one team is better than another. Sometimes you don't even need a No. 2 pencil.

The Denver Nuggets lead the Minnesota Timberwolves 3-0 in their first-round NBA playoff series because the Nuggets are excellent and the Timberwolves are not.

You don't need to look up anyone's PER or EFG% to figure this out.

The Nuggets earned the No. 1 seed. The Wolves required two play-in games to land the No. 8 seed. Only four times since the NBA playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1984 has an eighth seed won a series over a first seed.

The Nuggets have the best player on the floor in two-time MVP Nikola Jokic. He's not just a great player — he's a great thinker who can foil just about any defensive strategy.

The Nuggets have the second-best player on the floor in point guard Jamal Murray. The Wolves can hope that 21-year-old Anthony Edwards will eventually surpass Murray, but it hasn't happened yet. Edwards can be spectacular, but he doesn't control games the way Murray does.

The Wolves' strength should be their ability to attack opponents with two big men, Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert. Jokic neutralizes them all by himself.

If fully healthy, the Wolves might have had a bench advantage. With top defender Jaden McDaniels and oversized microwave Naz Reid out with injuries, the Wolves bench has been shallow and largely ineffective.

The Wolves' Chris Finch is an intelligent coach, but the kindest thing you can say about his matchup with Denver's Michael Malone is that Malone has inherent advantages: more experience as a head coach, more experience coaching in the playoffs, and more players who have the acuity to carry out his plans.

Inside knowledge can be overrated in a league as well-scouted as the NBA, but if there is an insider advantage, he is sitting on the Nuggets' bench. Former Wolves coach Ryan Saunders is a Nuggets assistant. He knows Towns' preferences and tendencies as well as anyone. Saunders is a highly intelligent coach. The guess here is that he has been an asset for Denver during this series.

Cohesiveness is vital in the NBA. The Nuggets play with the selflessness of a team eyeing a championship. The Wolves have recently had a key player punch a wall and had another key player punch a teammate.

Late Friday night, after the Nuggets survived the Wolves' best effort of the series to win 120-111 at Target Center, the coaches' reactions were as different as a shrug and a smile.

Finch grumbled his way through his usual answers about the ball getting "sticky" and his team making poor decisions down the stretch.

Malone gushed about his team's leadership, cohesiveness and mentality. He spoke of his group doing what it will take to capture an NBA title, including winning Game 4 to give the Nuggets time to rest before the second round.

One team has earned the right to dream. The other is trying to avoid the embarrassment of a sweep.

If there is any positive attached to this matchup, it is this: The guy who built this Nuggets team, Tim Connelly, is now running the Wolves. He has far to travel in proving that the Gobert trade was worthwhile, but two of his other moves — signing Kyle Anderson and trading D'Angelo Russell for Michael Conley — demonstrate the kind of team-building insights the Wolves will desperately need in this and subsequent offseasons.

I picked the Nuggets to win this series in five games. I might have been grotesquely optimistic.

All that is left for the Wolves is to display something that could be described as heart. Maybe Sunday they will provide hope that next season will not involve play-in games and ill-advised punches.