Wins don’t just present themselves. They’re not the fucking Sword of Gryffindor.
Wins aren’t a right, they’re a privilege, and they’re the only thing that matters right now. Whether it is in the liquid basketball fashion that we all crave to see whenever the Minnesota Timberwolves step on the hardwood or the grubby and hard-fought way we witnessed in this game. You take them and you bank them and you hope the momentum that each one builds helps the whole enterprise mushroom into an unstoppable cavalcade of confidence.
The game ends 121-120. From a bird’s eye view, nothing about this night screamed success. The Wolves’ defense which has mercilessly preyed upon their opponents so far this season was disjointed and looking exactly like a unit that was wrapping up a taxing five-game road trip. From the tip it seemed like their identity was in tatters, and that meant the rest of the night was an uphill slog. A marathon. A night where sweat equity would need to take the reins and supplement their lack of bankable traits.
So they slogged. They ran the entire marathon. They emptied the sweat tank. And with that came obstacles and more than a few moments where this night just seemed like it wasn’t destined to be theirs. The New Orleans Pelicans were gliding into any space they wanted, they were splashing triples from all areas, and Minnesota continually shot themselves in the foot with sloppy turnovers and another bout of non-existent offensive rebounding.
It felt like this game was just petering to its inevitable finale. If nothing else can be learned from the best part of three-and-a-half decades of Timberwolves basketball, it’s that these games are destined to peter into disappointment. This team is different, though, they keep loudly proclaiming it and it’s time we start listening. It’s time we open our ears and our hearts and our minds to the possibility that this is something extraordinarily different.
When the fourth period rolled around, that difference kicked in. The defense found a pulse and then it found an attitude. And, perhaps more importantly, the offense was sharpened steel. They ditched the free-flowing trash and replaced it with structured, dogmatic, narrow-minded play-calling. That allowed them to capitalize on New Orleans’ tired legs and fading will offensively by getting buckets of their own.
It all came to a head with a dramatic back-and-forth, a silky runner, and an unexpected win. They don’t all come easy. They’re not a right, they’re a privilege. They’re the best feeling imaginable and the Timberwolves are injecting it into our bloodstream.
Mike Conley: 4/10
His fermented legs were always going to cease up a little at some point on this arduous excursion through the Western Conference.
While he wasn’t actively hurting his team in this one — I’m not sure he ever could — he wasn’t dropping ladders to help them climb out of the deep hole they were in. A few of his passes acted as taut connective tissue between the firing centerpieces within the offense and he nailed what turned out to be an important triple to open the fourth period, but that was about it.
Alas, his other open looks appeared leggy all night and he missed a couple of open ones he’d usually bury with consummate ease in clutch time. His defense looked even more ragged. Let’s be honest, though, from a basketball perspective, he’s old as fuck. We should cherish the consistent output he blesses us with and accept that these tired nights are part of the job description.
Finished with 5 points (31.3% TS), 3 rebounds and 5 assists in 30 minutes — -7.9 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 7/10
Had such a strange night. He never really got going in any dimension of his game and yet his imprint was laced through the game. He wasn’t the heartbeat, but he was the muscle fibers that flexed periodically whenever the body seemed to tense up.
Whenever he wasn’t dealing with Scott Foster’s merry band of fuckwits and their incessant whistles, he was doing things. Sometimes they were bad things — his shot selection was iffy, his play was sticky, and his playmaking reads were a beat slow all evening — but at other times they were fantastic things. Things that maybe go understated in the wash of this game.
His mini-burst between the end of the first quarter and the midsection of the second was important. The Pelicans were gearing up to leave Minnesota floundering in their comet trail and he made three triples to just claw his team back onto the edge of the cliff. Then, as he has so often this season, he shined up his knuckledusters and threw a few fucking haymakers in the fourth.
He wasn’t the star of the show this time, but before he fouled out late in proceedings he was moonlighting as the venomous sidekick. He had a rim-attack and mid-range jimmy early in the final period, and then two huge catch-and-shoot triples as time wound down. As was the case with his night as a whole, there were some wacky decisions entwined between his haymakers, but when it really mattered those punches landed.
He’s doing that a lot so far this season, landing punches.
Finished with 23 points (60.5% TS), 3 rebounds and 4 assists in 30 minutes — +21.7 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 8/10
He should get more shots, shouldn’t he?
Just put the fucking orange thing in his hands more often and let him put the bastard into the other orange thing. Whenever they task him with doing so he just does it. He spins and twists and contorts and wriggles and he finds a way to get his lanky levers into a scoring position then he nestles it in its home with a silky touch.
Chris Finch would do well to remember he has a 6-foot-11 scoring freak just simmering in the basement. Let him out to terrorize the neighbors sometimes. Let him tear some fucking throats out a bit more often. That’s all I could think when New Orleans’ defense fattened up and foul trouble stripped Minnesota’s offensive options away during the darkest portions of this game.
He’s good at defense, as well. Really good. Maybe the best there is. Even when Brandon Ingram was raining tough jumpers on him in the first half, he never let his resolve slacken. He came out of halftime and wrapped his spidery appendages around Ingram. And when the final shot came, he smothered him in his defensive web. Clank. Win. First seed.
Give the kid his defensive flowers and give the kid some more usage on offense.
Finished with 12 points (80.6% TS) and 2 rebounds in 34 minutes — +11.3 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 10/10
Without being hyperbolic, this might be the best fucking night he’s ever had.
Sure, he’s had 60-point outbursts, 40 points nights with 20 rebounds alongside it more than once, huge nights on huge nights on huge nights. None of them bristled with maturity and winning flavor like this one. None of them grabbed his team and hoisted them to the first seed in the Western fucking Conference.
He was near perfect. He took 11 shots and finished with 29 points and nine assists for fuck’s sake.
Scott Foster was after blood on both sides of the ball and Towns was certainly one of the targets in his officiating crosshairs, but outside of that he just about clocked the game. We’d be here for a day rifling through his feats in chronological order. He was the gleaming focal point of Minnesota’s offense and every read he made was crisp. Every goddamn one.
Whether it was an extra pass to a shooter in crunch time or a slinging kick to the corner, every pass was a missile into the shooting pocket. Whether it was a driving layup, a one-legged fader, a contested trey, or a game-winning floater, every shot was equal parts calculated and silky.
Why’d they put Dyson Daniels on him? On the perimeter? In single coverage? With Jeremiah Robinson-Earl as the helper? And the game on the line? Talk about digging your grave and jumping in it with glee. Anyway, Towns scores easily, dances a merry jig on the freshly-packed earth, and the Wolves are the one seed. Thanks for coming.
Finished with 29 points (99.9% TS), 6 rebounds, 9 assists and 2 blocks in 33 minutes — +13.2 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 9/10
The cumbersome moments stand out on remembrance — he’s so often like a cave troll bumbling through a hobbit hole — but there were so many winning plays littered through the night. This big fuck breathes winning plays into the game as much as anybody on the roster.
Jonas Valanciunas got into a rhythm at one stage as a mid-range shot-dropper but Gobert was draped over him all night. He denied entry passes with his forever-stretching arms and lower body strength, he was active around the rim, and he was flexible enough to come out of drop coverage consistently to contest New Orleans’ guard and wing shot-creators.
Offensively, he did all they needed him to do. He made shots around the rim, which has been a real problem for a lot of the season. He missed the two clutch free throws but they aren’t there at the end if he didn’t make the vast majority of his other attempts throughout the night. He screened and he was aware of the spacing (especially in the second half) and he even threw up a hilarious corner pocket trey-ball.
This was far from his best night of the season and yet his big baguette fingerprints were left all over proceedings.
Finished with 17 points (74.6% TS), 11 rebounds and 2 steals in 34 minutes — -6.6 net rating.
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