They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they don’t wax lyrical enough about how majestic Rome is now. They never tell you how it feels to traipse the cobbled streets and embrace the beauty, or about the historic marvel mingling with the modern touches. The Eternal City. The Eternal Timberwolves. We know about the labors it took to construct this squad and the challenges that held it from completion, but it’s time to start embracing the dazzle of the finished product. It’s mesmerizing. It’s everything the Romans dreamed of when they erected their own version of dreamland.
The game ends 127-109. Tyrese Haliburton’s absence sucked some of the intrigue out of a matchup between the league’s best offense and the league’s best defense, but this Timberwolves team has a way of injecting fun back into any night. They can only beat who’s in front of them, and they chose to do it this time with as much flair and pizzazz as we’ve seen all season long.
The infant stages of the game were more sludge than superb, however. In a strange way, it wasn’t the free-flowing liquid basketball that Indiana has made themselves famous for this season, but Minnesota’s defense felt too porous to claim their own special sauce was slathered over the night.
When this team’s version of Rome was still in construction, it was the post-halftime blues that ensnared them and sought to become their ruin. But Rome is built now, and the Timberwolves are the most dangerous third-quarter team in the league.
In a blink, they turned a tenuous two-point halftime lead into a 17-point buffer at the end of their favorite frame. They rained hell upon Indiana from long-range, they were unselfish and crisp with their playmaking and execution, and they steamrolled the defensively-challenged Pacers. Without Haliburton’s brilliance to buoy them, Indiana was never going to mount a meaningful response.
And that’s that. The Eternal Timberwolves. Long may they rule the world.
Mike Conley: 8/10
Understated. Didn’t need to be anything more. If there is one thing you can bank on with Minnesota Mike it’s that he is going to plot a course through whatever waters Poseidon throws at his team. He is never going to fight the choppiness. He surfs whatever wave suits the unfurling night best.
So, when it was clear this was a night for the stars to burn bright, he took a backseat and watched the skies with awe. He was still instrumental in activating the offense and the play-calls Chris Finch was designing, but he was rarely the one finishing them off or providing any sort of guillotine assist. He just did what was necessary, on both ends, and did it with the veteran aplomb we’re beginning to take for granted.
Finished with 5 points (50% TS), 2 rebounds and 9 assists in 24 minutes — +39.3 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 10/10
Welcome back. It’s been a helter-skelter couple of weeks for our shoe-designing prodigy, but eventually you just knew someone was going to feel his wrath. Somebody was going to get burned into a pile of hapless ashes. Somebody was going to get fucked up.
And so it was the Indiana Pacers who drew the short straw. There’s no Haliburton excuse for this one, crushed under his heel no matter who played. They might have thought themselves lucky when Edwards limped out of the gates — he failed to score in the first period while committing a couple of fouls and a few silly turnovers — but when the gong went off the clang echoed through eternity and just about shattered the fucking sound barrier.
A mid-range moneymaker seemed to crack open the tomb he’d been trapped in, and then the jumpers cascaded from there; the floodgates were flung open. He nails four straight triples in the second quarter, all from that right slot, and then he went to work in the other areas of his game. He got some buckets going downhill in post split actions, a little floater out of a post-up, and a few isolation slaloms.
Buckets on buckets on buckets. Hallelujah, he is risen.
Finished with 37 points (77.5% TS), 4 rebounds, 2 assists and 3 steals in 34 minutes — +26.3 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 5/10
Can’t catch a break. He didn’t look right from the tip, but when he fell on his backside again it was obvious he had a problem that could only be solved with rest. A sacral contusion, they’re calling it. When you’ve got a sacral contusion, you really can’t catch a fucking break.
Finished with 5 points (62.5% TS) in 18 minutes — +21.1 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 10/10
All season long Indiana has watched big wings and scoring forwards massacre them and pick at their rotting carcass, they’re a handpicked opponent for Towns to dominate. He didn’t need a second invitation.
Even when things were mired in the muck during the first half, he was the pillar holding up the offense. Importantly, he didn’t stay bogged down in one spot, choosing to attack from the perimeter, work out of pick-and-roll scenarios, and monster the puny Pacers in the post. Whatever way he did choose, the result was the same. Points. A barrage of points. An avalanche of the fuckers.
In the end, the avalanche was too vast for Indiana to tunnel out of it. They suffocated under the weight of their own defensive flaws.
On the other end, Towns moonlighted as the defensive disruptor. The event creator. He struggled a touch in pick-and-roll coverage, but he was electric as a defensive playmaker. He rotated swiftly all night and he got his big paws on the pumpkin a ton. He made sure the Pacers felt him, the same way they did offensively.
His best night of the season.
Finished with 40 points (70.1% TS), 12 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks in 35 minutes — +25.4 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 5/10
This wasn’t a matchup that was conducive to the overwhelming defensive sovereignty we’ve come to expect from him. The Pacers play a small-ball style, swing the ball around the perimeter, and jack up triples incessantly. He was never going to find that comfortable, but even then he struggled to get motoring in this one.
He just seemed a little slow to everything. Slow to stop rim-attacks, slow to sky for rebounds, slow in thought when finishing around the rim. He’s fallen out of his zenith a little lately and this was a continuation of that.
He did have a moment, however. Sometimes, all it takes is a moment. Aaron Nesmith hit him with the ‘too small’ celebration — a hilarious thing to do when you’re Aaron fucking Nesmith — and that was it. He waited patiently for Nesmith to get downhill again and then stuffed his shot into the earth’s fucking crust.
Apparently that stole the meager powers of efficacy from Nesmith, too, because he didn’t make another shot for the night and spent his time blowing defensive assignments and routinely making a fool of himself.
Never test the powers of the world’s best defender. Never tempt the gods. Never sell the skin until you’ve caught the bear.
Finished with 5 points (60.2% TS) and 7 rebounds in 25 minutes — +21.1 net rating.
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