Player Ratings: Game 19 | Charlotte Hornets
Wolves overcome some shaky moments to win on the road.
Choose life. Choose living it in a new and different way. Choose big men. Choose breaking free from the societal norms that have a stranglehold on the modern-day game. Choose terrorizing teams in the paint. Choose blocked shots and cutting slams and overpowering length. Choose lineups that have three bigs in it. Choose confused opposing coaches. Choose being unique. Choose unicorns. Choose being dominant. Choose the Minnesota Timberwolves experience.
The game ends 123-117. In many ways this game had disappointment pulsating through it. The Charlotte Hornets are a pygmy of the league and without LaMelo Ball they’re an even sorrier bunch, it shouldn’t have taken late-game heroics to overcome them. In other ways, this was the kind of win that stamps Minnesota’s newfangled credentials. They could have let a sloppy night encase them in a tomb of self-pity. They could have succumbed to the same woebegone attitude that sunk them on many a night last season.
Instead, they chose life. They chose the same can-do attitude that has buoyed them all season long. The whole night was a seesawing brawl and the Timberwolves were the ones throwing the early jabs, seemingly in cruise control against the lowly Hornets, but through a heavy dose of transition buckets Charlotte climbed back and eventually found themselves in the ascendency.
It did seem, with all of the past Wolves traumas bubbling back into the front of our collective minds, that they were going to get swallowed up by the trap game. Then the maturity kicked in. The calmness that has exuded through everything they’ve done in this wonderous campaign. They slowed the offense down and executed — stopping Charlotte’s run-and-gun gameplan — and then they shut off the faucet defensively. They mangled the Hornets in clutch time and they walked away with a shaky-yet-impressive win.
Choose life. Choose the Timberwolves. Choose being the best team in the Western Conference.
Mike Conley: 8/10
If you want to know why the Timberwolves are so much more mature, composed and capable this season, there’s a big red fucking arrow above his head. He’s not the only one fighting the war on immaturity, but he’s in the vanguard, howling at the moon with war paint smeared across his patriarchal face.
He missed a bunch of wide-open looks from long-range that he’d usually gobble up with a ravenous grin throughout the first three quarters. It’s always weird when those looks don’t nestle themselves into the nylon. But when the duress amplified in the closing moments, he snatched the reins and rode his steed majestically into the sunset.
He slithers through the entire Hornets defense and finishes with a smart layup. Next time down the floor, Rudy Gobert is rooted to the low block begging for a post-up. Knowing as well as we do how those post-ups usually transpire, he tells him to get the fuck up out of there and calls Towns into a pick-and-roll, where Conley promptly slips a pocket pass through a closing sliver for an easy bucket.
Then, after the Hornets get a horseshit trio of free throws, he scurries past the front line of defense, gets Nick Richards on his hip, and ices the game with a nifty floater and a foul to boot. All of that came within the final 2 minutes and 30 seconds of a tight game.
That’s Minnesota Mike in a nutshell. The ebbs don’t rattle him. He knows the flows will come. He’s too wise and too sage to dwell on the valleys, he just awaits the peaks and basks in the view they provide.
Finished with 14 points (55.9% TS), 5 rebounds and 10 assists in 34 minutes — +16.9 net rating.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker: 4/10
Say one thing for Nickeil Alexander-Walker, say he oscillates wildly between extremes — at least on the offensive side of things. You can kind of always pencil in a baseline of competence defensively, and although he was far from his menacing best in this game, he was still chasing around the likes of Terry Rozier and Brandon Miller and doing so with at least middling success.
It’s his offense that swings like a pendulum. One night he’s the living embodiment of the fucking sun and the next he’s frozen tundra; flat and icy and utterly desolate. When things were spiraling out of control in this game, it seemed there was always a moment when Alexander-Walker was in the thick of the rot.
Whether it was an ill-advised pull-up triple that missed the rim by a half-dozen feet or a untamed layup attempt in traffic, he propagated the uncontrolled hoops that the Wolves inflicted upon themselves far too often. It’s those moments where you see the differences between him and Jaden McDaniels, who oozes calmness and efficiency offensively every night.
Finished with 6 points (62.5% TS), 2 rebounds and 2 assists in 30 minutes — -7.4 net rating.
Troy Brown Jr.: 8/10
The play late in the game where he wormed in from the corner, snatched the offensive rebound, and then canned a deep wing trifecta when the ball swung back around to him kind of encapsulates exactly what he’s given the Wolves since he punctured his way into the rotation. The amalgamation of scrappy and sparkling, scraggly and suave.
When you watch him do what he does — and this wasn’t anything overtly spectacular, it was just his usual reliable-not-remarkable night — it’s hard to believe how he was sat on the bench when the team was completely healthy.
He shoots the piss out of the pumpkin, the team needs that. He nails another three from six attempts in this one. He defends, that’s exactly the fabric that this snarling defensive squad loves and he can bounce between any position one-to-four. And he rebounds, every time, he’s in there jostling and he has big levers that he uses to wrench in contested balls.
Yes please. Give me more of that. Don’t take it away from me. Keep him in the rotation and don’t you dare fucking take him out.
Finished with 9 points (64.3% TS) and 3 rebounds in 32 minutes — +28.1 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 10/10
The first prong of the three-headed big-man hydra that conspired to stomp the Hornet’s nest and laugh at the trivial stings. Every time Charlotte tried to lop off one head, two more fang-filled serpent noggins grew back and doused them in poisonous venom. Charlotte needed Herculean strength to defeat them and the Hornets aren’t Hercules. They’re fucking shit.
So, aside from a few dodgy whistles impeding him early on, Towns systematically dismembered any and all defensive coverages hurled his way. Like a serial killer hacking away at his unlucky victim. It’s not the Hornets’ fault, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When they slacked off him, he came off flare screens or snaked out of pick-and-pop screens to drill triples with impunity. When they tried to shroud him on those outside looks, he dusted them off the dribble and finished at the rim. He made a couple of brilliant passes as a pick-and-roll ball-handler and he took them into the post when the mood struck. He even faced up for a couple of honey-sweet mid-range jumpers.
When things started looking seriously worrying in that final frame, he weaved that offensive mastery together and made sure his team wouldn’t lose without swinging a few haymakers first. They landed. He stood victorious in the ring. Ring the fucking bell.
Finished with 28 points (60.9% TS), 7 rebounds and 5 assists in 32 minutes — +15.2 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 10/10
In Faust-like fashion, he seems to have traded his soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge, worldly pleasures, a granite-cut body, and the ability to fucking destroy every team he plays basketball against. Fair deal.
It’s not often that he’s a true, uninhibited two-way megastar, but this was one of those nights. He dunked everything offensively. Pick-and-roll finishes, cuts, rim-runs in semi-transition, putbacks. The whole fucking lot. He also knocked down his free throws (he’s progressing to the mean in that area) and made the right decision as a playmaker on several occasions. He was a 10/10 on his offensive impact alone. That was surely the devil’s touch, keeping his end of the bargain.
What we do expect at this point, however, is his defensive prowess. He didn’t preside over this night with the same rambunctious preeminence he has in recent weeks but his moment was always going to come and he was always going to wolf it down when it did. The two most important defensive possessions were funneled in his direction and he did the thing. The Gobert thing. The Defensive Player of the Year thing.
Nick Richards, short of talent and apparently even more scarce of brains, tries to float in a short jumper while standing directly in front of Gobert. C’mon. Swatted. Rejected. Treated with the disdain it deserved. Next it’s Miles Bridges coming downhill at him. Nope. He should have clotheslined the fucking loser into another dimension but he settled for putting a lid on the rim and winning the game for his team.
Then he turned to the bench with a puzzled look. As if to ask why. As if confused about why anybody would ever challenge him at the rim, let alone twice in a row. He’s right, you know.
Finished with 26 points (81.5% TS), 12 rebounds and 3 blocks in 39 minutes — +17.9 net rating.
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