When you step into the warzone, there shouldn’t be any surprises. There will be wounds, there will be brutality, and there will be casualties. The Minnesota Timberwolves have been the ones limping away from the theater of war with a victorious grin so often this season, but there is little room for error on the battlefront. One mistake can be costly, a few can be disastrous. That’s the way it is in the warzone, sometimes you’re the conqueror and sometimes you’re the vanquished.
The game ends 115-108. In totality, it was always the Wolves fighting uphill. The Dallas Mavericks are a tricky proposition even when one of Kyrie Irving or Luka Doncic is absent, but when they both suit up they’re an offensive scythe fresh from the whetstone. It never felt like the Wolves were going to be able to avoid that blade, from the first minute to the last.
And, yet, the smash-and-grab presented itself and Minnesota did all of the smashing and none of the grabbing.
Again, it was Dallas’ game to lose and nobody could argue the Mavericks didn’t do enough to win. Whether it was Doncic severing Minnesota’s defense with his pudgy blend of off-the-bounce scoring and X-ray passing, Irving worming his way through the defense with his trademark handle, or the peripheral contributors benefitting from the space those two otherworldly players create, they always seemed likely to breakdown Minnesota’s vaunted defense. Still, the smash-and-grab was there.
The Timberwolves hung around long enough to eventually wear down the Mavericks’ army, and when they pushed one of their few leads of the night up to six points and with a tick under four minutes remaining the bank vault was all Minnesota’s. The money sat unguarded. The smash was done and the grab was on offer.
But it all fell by the wayside before they could complete the caper. The Wolves generated enough good looks to outpace Dallas, but they couldn’t knock any of them down. A couple of boneheaded turnovers were in the mix, too, and when Dallas countered with their stereotypical offensive punch, the whole heist fell apart. It’ll always be a make or miss league, and the Wolves missed when they needed to make.
It happens, you know, a cold stretch at an inopportune time is nothing we haven’t seen before and nothing we won’t see again. The Wolves probably didn’t deserve to win this one and the basketball gods had their way in the end. That doesn’t remove the sting of a night that was there for the taking and couldn’t be taken. A smash-and-grab gone awry. A self-inflicted casualty on the battlefield.
Mike Conley: 5/10
Is this his roughest stretch since he became a Wolf?
It sure feels that way.
It’s not because he’s overtly bad — he never is — and it’s not because of his meager box score showings — he’s often scarce in numbers but hefty on impact — it’s that his presence hasn’t been felt in that way we’re used to for a while now. There was the flashbang at the end of the Lakers win over a week ago, but before then and certainly after then he’s been a shell of his usual self.
He still has his triumvirate of pretty triples coming from side-stepping out of trouble or chilling in the corner, but he misses two wide-open ones in the fourth quarter and generally struggles in every other aspect compared to usual. He isn’t dovetailing with Rudy Gobert as much, he isn’t digging his heels in as a defender, and he’s not doing all those intangible things that occurred so often they started to become tangible.
In this marathon they call the season, he’s having a slow mile or two. If anybody knows how to negotiate that and spin it back in his favor, it’s going to be him.
Finished with 9 points (50% TS), 7 assists and 2 turnovers in 32 minutes — +0.3 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 10/10
I know it’s become the flavor of the month to overanalyze every morsel of his game. That’s what happens when you become so good that box scores are but a beefy afterthought, but it’s tough to keep pretending like what he’s doing on a nightly basis isn’t really fucking special.
Of course the microscope is going to hover over him the longest. Of course his isolation bricked triple in clutch time is going to garner a bucket of attention. But there is no clutch time without him. There’s not even time. This whole enterprise would lose any semblance of palpability and everything would be a nonsensical parade of nothingness.
So, where we overanalyze, we should also appreciate. Where we rightfully lambast his bad shot, we should praise the mountain of work he did all night long to put Minnesota in the realm of winning.
He lived at the rim, pounding Dallas’ spongy defense with icy fury time and time and fucking time again. He nailed his catch-and-shoot looks from deep and one ballsy pull-up as well. He did have some puzzling moments as an off-ball defender, but his on-ball work was phenomenal; you don’t get to rip Kyrie Irving in isolation and touch the heavens to block his jumper in the same night without having something innately special coursing through your veins.
He even deserves credit for his late-game unselfishness — even if his teammates ultimately ran his gifts up a blind alley. He could have feathered his own nest by continuing to shoot under any and all circumstances, and maybe he should have, but his final few on-ball possessions included a stinging whip to Jaden McDaniels in the corner (which he missed), an on-point pocket pass to Rudy Gobert (which he turned over) and a well-executed set play that ended with him handing off for Karl-Anthony Towns to miss a straightaway triple.
So we can look past the gaudy numbers. Fuck them. He’s too good to be defined only by numbers. But the impact was there and it was that of a megastar.
Finished with 36 points (59.8% TS), 10 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals and 2 turnovers in 33 minutes — -3.4 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 3/10
Even on his bad nights, you get the defensive versatility and stringent stopping of a madman. A spider possessed by the will of the defensive deities. The type that allows him to stay in the grill of a bullying big guard like Luka Doncic or a slithering small one like Kyrie Irving. Defense is a process-based business, so when those two are making tough looks with incessant ease, it shouldn’t be a sickle to slice him with.
However, some bad nights are created differently from others. This wasn’t just a night where he couldn’t quite find his rhythm, this was a night where rhythm cackled in his face and punted him in the fucking balls.
It’s hard not to see the way he scuffed every open look he had and entwine it with how this game panned out and not feel dissatisfied. The two super-duper wide-open looks he had on his favorite corner 3-balls late in the game especially stand out as backbreakers for an offense that always has trouble manufacturing good looks.
He’s never going to be judged solely on his ability to uphold an offense — he’s just too important and talented defensively — but when he’s missing the ones he usually makes (and the team needs him to make) then his defensive work ethic does begin to feel less important.
Finished with 2 points (10% TS), 3 rebounds and 4 assists in 37 minutes — -11.3 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 7/10
What a strange night he had. In many ways he was brilliant, in other ways he was terrible, in some ways his process was improved tenfold, in other ways it was the same old demons whispering in tongues into his ear.
We can start with the bad.
He doesn’t know what a fucking foul is and he needs to learn. Maybe it’s because he’s refereed like he’s atop the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list, but it’s hard to square 27 minutes of foul-ridden action in a game that demanded the stars on the court at all possible points. If they get another 10 out of him they probably win this one and, while he gets some bogus calls, he doesn’t half make it easy for them to whistle the obvious ones.
His defense is also on a worryingly sharp decline. That’s been a consistent theme of late (perhaps due to what does seem to be a lingering knee knock) and he’s quickly entering the liability zone he lived in for so many years. The Wolves can’t get back to their devastating best on that end unless he’s a crucial spoke in the wheel.
But there was good. There was even great.
They don’t make their consistent rallies all night long without his shot-making around the rim and from beyond the arc. The latter being so important because he had a quick trigger and a seemingly unquenchable thirst to jack up shots from deep. He didn’t make as many as would be ideal — 3-for-9 including two in the clutch that you’d expect him to make — but the process to keep shooting is awesome and will embolden the team offense in the aggregate.
In the brief moments that the Wolves looked like they would win this game, it was Towns manning the cockpit alongside Edwards and they were both playing the way they should play. It didn’t last, but it will on other nights if they both play that way.
A strange night, indeed.
Finished with 24 points (64.4% TS), 7 rebounds, 2 blocks and 3 turnovers in 27 minutes — -8.6 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 4/10
Living proof that the visage of one’s night is often created at the end of a game, not the beginning.
Because he came out of the gates like a bull with a slapped ass. He monstered Dallas’ puny frontcourt. Imagine putting the likes of Grant fucking Williams on him with all sincerity. The man looks like a discarded fucking fridge. Gobert vacuumed in every offensive rebound, scored every putback, embraced every hack and, for a long while, kept the Wolves in the game simply by creating more offensive possessions than Dallas was capable of.
But as the game wore on and Dallas adjusted to his rebounding dominance, his effectiveness waned. And, when the biggest moments presented themselves, he cowered before them like they were great beasts with thousand-fanged maws.
Standing frozen to the spot and allowing Kyrie Irving to snatch the ball away from him after a defensive rebound was a dagger to the chest. His short-roll turnover was one to the brain. He was too easily screened out of a defensive rotation on the next possession, and that was the ball game.
He has provided us with so many heroics on the defensive end this season, but this was a late-game meltdown with his trademark offensive buffoonery.
Finished with 9 points (41.8% TS), 17 rebounds and 5 turnovers in 34 minutes — +3.2 net rating.
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