Game Prep: Weathering The Thunderstorm

Examining what the Wolves need to do to advance past the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Photo by David Berding/Getty Images

Beating the Oklahoma City Thunder and advancing into the playoffs as the eighth seed won’t scrub the stains off Minnesota’s mediocre season. The festering lacerations of a weirdly unsatisfying season won’t be healed during a series against the first-seed Denver Nuggets without some sort of miraculous upset. The narrative around the team, front office and coaching staff will likely continue to border on poisonous.

And yet this one win-and-get-in game feels like a precipice that the organization needs to hurdle. A playoff berth might not be the cure-all for a tempestuous season, but there will never be a substitute for playoff basketball and perhaps the tornado that threatens to blow the franchise down calms to just gale-force winds.

Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid won’t get the chance to sharpen their youthful axes in the game’s most fearsome amphitheater, but Anthony Edwards will and the scar tissue that is formed from meaningful nights under searingly bright lights is the most important thing in his development right now.

For Karl-Anthony Towns, it’s a chance to either bury his postseason demons or cement a narrative that may force the organization to think of him in a totally different light moving forward. Rudy Gobert has similar chinks in his armor to try and patch up. Together, the two big men need to be able to prove they can play together against Nikole Jokic, the league’s most skilled oversized fulcrum.

Two mishandled play-in games aren’t enough to draw the conclusions that a series against the Nuggets would provide — even if the outlook for a positive series result is poor. So, beating the upstart Thunder won’t be the magic elixir that mends all of the maladies, but it’s an absolute necessity.

Oklahoma City are young, feckless, and on the path to untethered success no matter if they win or not. That makes them dangerous. While the Wolves can play the part of the wounded and cornered beast, the Thunder have no fear of any teeth that may wrap around their limbs. They’re just not weighed down by the aforementioned pressures that smother the Timberwolves.

On any given night, they can blow the doors off a game with pure youthful exuberance; a carefree ethos backed by a blossoming coaching style. And, in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, they have a legitimate superstar and another deathly ingredient to sprinkle into the mix.

The Wolves need things to go right for them. Or, more accurately, they need to make things go right for them.

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