MINNEAPOLIS — The lyrics booming from a portable speaker on the Target Center court Friday revealed the Nuggets’ headspace ahead of Game 4.

“Come with me, Hail Mary/Run quick see, what do we have here?” the late Tupac Shakur’s voice carried through an empty arena.

“Now, do you wanna ride or die?”

That’s the question facing Denver ahead of Saturday’s pivotal game against the hard-playing, smack-talking Timberwolves. To ride back to Denver with home-court advantage and the series reduced to a best-of-three affair will require a more gangster-rap mentality. Another soft performance would leave Denver’s season on its deathbed.

On offense, continuing the ride means setting sturdier screens that free Jamal Murray from Jaden McDaniels and Nikola Jokic from Rudy Gobert. More physicality would also help on the glass. Minnesota has won the rebounding battle in both of its wins.

“We’ve got to show more fight,” Christian Braun said after practice.

“We’ve got to be in there. You’ve got to sandwich rebound. You’ve got to get into guys. You’ve got to push guys out of bounds, just be more physical.”

On the other end, that means keeping Anthony Edwards, Ayo Dosunmu and Jaden McDaniels from getting to the rim at will.

“Defensively in the half court, even when we were good schematically, our hands weren’t on people enough. You have to toe that line in these games,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said.

“We were very selective (Thursday) with how we played physically on both ends. It’s just got to be better.”

The belief is that shots will start to fall after another uncharacteristic offensive performance. Adelman was also encouraged with the defensive effort in the second half. The Nuggets coach thought the variety of defensive schemes Denver deployed finally got the Timberwolves to slow down.

“We can play much harder, but I do think yesterday missing shots at the volume that we did, it’s almost impossible to not to feel like it’s downhill for them,” Adelman said. “It’s hard to set your defense that way.”

One Nuggets player told The Denver Gazette he believed the strength and conditioning coaches provided the playlist that exclusively featured Tupac’s catalogue, while players got up shots after practice. A little extra muscle would go a long way to keeping Denver’s postseason ride alive.

For those who haven’t heard “Hit Em Up,” one thing Tupac understood was handling rivals.

“We’ve seen these guys a million times. It’s always a competitive series. It’s obviously a rivalry. We feel the same way about them as they feel about us. It’s 2-1. We’ve got to win Game 4, and we’ve got home-court advantage,” Braun said.

“Got to take care of Game 4, then all this stuff that’s been up to this point doesn’t really matter. Gotta play better going forward, gotta be more physical.”