It feels like a lifetime between games like that.
The Minnesota Timberwolves have had good games this season. Stuffed between the nightmare nights, they’ve even had great games. They just haven’t had a game like that. This one was dazzling, dominant, and destructive. This one was riddled with highlights and home runs. This wasn’t their hardest win or even their most impressive, but this was their most fun win. This was the one that will linger in our memories long after this season passes by. Through 30 games, there has been a distinct lack of fun, but this one checked every box and kicked every goal.
The game ends 150-126. 150. One hundred and fifty. A Brinks truck full of points. A franchise record. There’s no reason to fabricate anything about Minnesota having a good defensive night themselves, but when you score 150 points you win the game of basketball. Simple as that.
For once, this felt like a game Minnesota had under their spell from the get-go. Even when Chicago turned around an early eight-point deficit to lead at the first break, Minnesota responded immediately in the second quarter. Even when Chicago made shot after shot against Minnesota’s shoddy off-ball defense, the Wolves responded with double the fury. Even when Chicago made runs in the third and fourth quarter — the kind that has pulverized Minnesota’s confidence in many a game this season — the return serve came quickly and ravenously.
It was just an unstoppable offensive performance. There really isn’t another way to frame it. Minnesota shot 65.5 percent from the field and knocked down 23 triples at 53.5 percent. A scintillating sledgehammer disposing of everything in its path. They won’t reach those heights again this season, which isn’t an insult, but this can be the stepping stone that leads to a path they have yet to travel this season. The path of fun.
D’Angelo Russell: 10/10
The rim looks like a fucking hula hoop right now. He’s just throwing pebbles into the fucking ocean. It felt that way before the knee knock that kept him out for a couple of nights, it felt that way when he was percolating in a rare rhythm for the entire night, and it certainly felt that way when he was hoisting a late-shot-clock moonball from the logo that barely scraped nylon on its way down.
Everything just seems so easy for him right now. Such a stark contrast to the start of the season when everything was like swimming through miles of thick sludge. Now, he is waltzing through golden valleys. Again, the shot is buttery, like fucking soaked in butter, but the playmaking is just as juicy. He spoon-feeds Nathan Knight for a couple of hammers, he makes the extra pass more than once around the perimeter, and he generally just dictates the entire flow of the offense when he has the ball. Light work.
Finished with 28 points (97% TS), 2 rebounds and 8 assists in 37 minutes — +40.4 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 10/10
Like a beam of godly night covering the entire evening, rays flooding the weirdly-colored Target Center and blinding the eyes of every hapless Bull. This was probably the most complete performance of his career, even with the caveat that Chicago’s defense was about as reliable as a wet fart. It’s hard to pinpoint moments without turning this into a fucking novel, just pick your fancy and he tickled it.
The 19-point scoring outburst in the third quarter was really when Chicago were forced to dig their own grave and dive headlong into the pit. A shrieking flurry of rim-swoops and nasty self-created jumpers that was capped perfectly with one of the nuttiest buzzer-beating treys you’re ever likely to experience.
But, maybe you like dunks. Maybe you like seeing a man who is built like a fucking boulder flying through the air and windmilling the ball into its rightful place. Maybe seeing the building erupt and the faces of Edwards’ teammates droop in disbelief is what scratches your itch.
It would be a shame to overlook the playmaking, though. The career-high 11 assists. The pick-and-roll lasers, the live-dribble cross-court skips, the transition hit-ahead plays, the probe-and-pass plays from within the maw of Chicago’s defense. Pick a pass and he whipped it. Pick a read and he made it. Pick a jaw he dropped it.
This was the next step. The evolution. Asking him to turn this into an every-night performance is heaping too much responsibility onto his broad shoulders, but even half of this all-around efficacy would vault him into another stratosphere.
Finished with 37 points (65.9% TS), 7 rebounds, 11 assists and 2 steals in 38 minutes — +20.6 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 9/10
Probably flew under the radar while Minnesota’s backcourt was fucking shit all the way up, but their gangly small forward was doing his part, too. When he is locked and loaded in all aspects of his enigmatic game, this team is just a different beast. He doesn’t have the gravitas of Russell and Edwards, but McDaniels can turn this team from whimpering to snarling.
You get what you always get defensively. While the rest of the team stood around with their fingers fiddling their balloon knot, McDaniels was putting out as many fires as his spindly limbs could manage. Not just the three rejections, but the multi-effort closeouts, the low-man rotations, and the point-of-attack presence as well.
That’s all pretty normal stuff for him. His defensive genes are superhuman, even if we’ve come to take that fact for granted. However, when he is knocking down corner bombs, slicing through the defense with timely cuts, and loping down the floor on fast breaks like some sort of mutated gazelle, that’s when he can morph this team into an offensive juggernaut. Throw in the added emphasis on rebounding and playmaking that we saw in this one and the potential is enough to split a man’s seams.
Now, he just needs to find that level with more consistency.
Finished with 15 points (88.9% TS), 8 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 blocks in 34 minutes — +39.3 net rating.
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