Timberwolves rally to knock defending champion Nuggets out of NBA playoffs
It marked the sixth straight season that the defending champions failed to make it out of the second round.
"The teams are more hungry, better, (more) talented than last year," Denver star Nikola Jokic said of the difficulty of repeating, even in a season in which he scooped a third Most Valuable Player award.
"Everybody gets better. Everybody wants to beat us, probably."
The Timberwolves followed up a 45-point game-six victory with an epic comeback from 20 points down in the third quarter to win their best-of-seven series 4-3 and book a Western Conference finals clash with the Dallas Mavericks.
Karl-Anthony Towns scored 23 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, Jaden McDaniels added 23 points and Anthony Edwards hit his stride late as the Timberwolves became the first team to come back from a halftime deficit of more than 11 points to win a game seven.
"I think our poise was the most (important) thing," Edwards told broadcaster TNT after he shook off his early struggles to score 12 of his 16 points in the second half.
The Nuggets went cold as Edwards and the Timberwolves built a rhythm and cut the deficit to one point going into the final quarter, then took on a driving layup by Rudy Gobert early in the fourth.
"They were scoring," said Jokic, who scored 14 of his 34 points in the fourth. "They had a lot of offensive rebounds. We cannot make shots.
"I think we had a lot of open looks, wide-open looks, but that's what happens. Sometimes you make shots, sometimes you miss shots, and today I think we missed a lot of good shots.
"But that's not just on us. They played some good defense."
Jamal Murray scored 35 points for Denver, but had just 11 in the second half.
"It's tough when you get the looks you want and you don't make them and they come down and score," Murray said. "I felt like we got the shots we wanted and the opportunities were there."
But Jokic said he wouldn't buy into the notion that defeat felt worse because the Nuggets should have won.
"I don't believe in that," the Serbian star said. "I think the team who wins is the better team."