It feels good to feel good.
Momentum is a fickle mistress, always ready to slip through fingers that aren’t prepared to hold her, and the Wolves felt the emptiness in their palms for the first time all season in the past few days. But she’s also a forgiving lover, always willing to reconcile with those who prove worthy, and the Wolves only needed a night like this to regain their reputability.
It feels good to feel good. And this is the type of win that makes everybody feel good.
The game ends 122-95. A good old-fashioned walloping is always the cure to any ailment that this marathon season has to offer. Time will tell if this was the ideal tool to remove the damaged nerves that have been aching the Wolves of late or whether it was just a lovely-looking veneer, but for now it simply feels good to feel good.
The Houston Rockets aren’t the same gaggle of mismanaged talent they have been for the past few years, either. They’re well coached, well organized, and nurturing that talent in smart and effective ways. Traipsing into their home court — they’d won 14 of 19 coming into this one — and pummeling the pus from their pimples isn’t something to be shrugged off lightly.
So, it’s worth cherishing a night like this right now. It’s worth cherishing a night like this always. When everything breaks right and everything goes right and everything is executed right, those nights are liquid gold. Those nights force momentum to bat her eyelashes again. The Wolves have had so many of those nights this season, it was relieving to get back to it.
It just feels good to feel good.
Mike Conley: 5/10
Still doesn’t seem to be at his most spritely or at his most impactful right now. He’s never truly horrendous — he’s just too smart and too attuned to the intricacies of a game to fall into that category — but when he isn’t percolating like we’ve seen him percolate, he can tend to drift into obscurity a little bit more than you’d like.
In fairness, if anybody can be given the benefit of the doubt it’s him. There’s every chance he saw the whole machine working in one seamless and swift motion and he was happy to take a step back and just be a regular old cog rather than the big fucking blade that lops off heads for fun. They didn’t need him to be the hero in this one and thus he never seemed to grasp the spotlight.
There will be nights where he needs to strap his cape on and shoot laser beams out of his pupils again, so if this means he is more rested for those nights then we will all shake on that deal.
Finished with 8 points (50% TS), 2 rebounds and 5 assists in 25 minutes — +23.5 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 7/10
Another seesawing kind of night for him.
He did do a better job plundering his points without sequestering the entirety of the offense. He doesn’t really have spots — they’re all his fucking spots and he knows it — but it did feel like he picked his spots in a better way.
Because you can’t put reins on a fucking lion, and Edwards isn’t your regular old stallion. The league is built upon unfettered predators dragging their pack into the endzone, so he needs the leeway to take some bad shots from the mid-range or choreograph his own offense in a way that feels like it’s dampening the dazzling ball movement we all desire. You don’t get the exulting highs without the puzzling lows.
Still, the turnover problem he is enduring is a beast beneath the boards and the floors are starting to splinter. It does feel like he’s a beat late on every passing read and the scouting report against him is starting to feast upon it. Another fistful of mishaps in this one only furthers his issues, although his improved willingness to get off the ball (even when it went awry) is an improvement over the one-man army play we’ve seen of late.
It’s easy to forget that he’s still a work in progress.
Finished with 24 points (61.1% TS), 3 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals in 33 minutes — +20.0 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 8/10
When he scores, the Timberwolves are a better team. It’s just an undeniable fact of life. The sky is blue, grass is green, the moon follows the sun, and Jaden McDaniels scoring within the flow of the offense is a winning fucking recipe.
When the ball found him on the second side, he was able to slither past his man and finish in that hilariously ungainly way that he does. When slick ball movement ended with him in the corner or standing open on the wing, he was able to knock down his jumper. When the Rockets turned it over for the umpteenth time, he was able to capitalize with streaking finishes at the rim.
It wasn’t his best night at the point of attack defensively against the slimy stylings of Jalen Green, so becoming a true weapon within the offense was essential. Box ticked. More. More more more. They need to find him more.
Finished with 16 points (57.3% TS) and 3 rebounds in 30 minutes — +13.3 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 8/10
He still feels a ways off his bubbling best, but there was a determination not to let this night crumble into calamity that hasn’t been there as much of late. The team offense was closer to a beast alive in this one and he was closer to its lifeblood. That’s a step forward that feels as if it is of the utmost importance.
There were still the bugbears that need admonishing, however. His drives into traffic are fucking maddening. It’s like watching a kid burn his hand on the burner and then dip his fucking head into it a moment later. Those forays into the lane beget turnovers, missed shots and, ultimately, simmering frustrations and they need to cease.
But they didn’t take dominion of his game. Instead, he shrugged them off and relied on his post-scoring against the flimsy defense of Jabari Smith Jr. and the playmaking that can come from those positions. He cannoned toward the offensive glass, resulting in easy putbacks or recycled possessions for the offense. And, above all, he regained his footing as a defender.
It’s just so important that his defensive intensity and productivity return to what it was earlier in the season. This was a big step forward in that regard. He won his battles against Alperen Sengun and all the funkiness that comes with the Turkish phenom. He rotated sharply off the ball. And he seemed far more aware of what the gameplan entailed.
Baby steps can quickly become giant fucking leaps and he’s certainly moving forward again.
Finished with 22 points (78.1% TS), 8 rebounds and 6 assists in 31 minutes — +31.8 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 8/10
Like Towns, having him inch closer to his full capabilities on the defensive end is paramount. Unlike Towns, he doesn’t have the huge burden to carry or bag to go to offensively, so it’s really important that he starts to bristle with that defensive confidence once more.
It was all hands to the pump early in the night when Sengun was a whirling dervish of post-ups and counter moves and push shots and fucking weirdness, but Gobert inched his way into ascendancy as the night progressed and ended up manning the throne when that clash concluded.
Once he came to grips with Sengun’s game, he was able to do his thing as a rim-protecting giant and a sharp-witted rotator. He shut off the scoring faucet for the Rockets in a way that we have been starved of lately. And, as usual, when he feels the intrinsic joy of defensive mastery start coursing through his veins, it bleeds into his offensive game.
Seven shots. Six makes. Rugged post-ups, thundering slams, rolling lobs, and putback points. The back catalog of a man who’s being doing the same thing for eons. Merci beaucoup.
Finished with 13 points (78.1% TS), 12 rebounds, 2 steals and 2 blocks in 33 minutes — +31.8 net rating.
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