This team fights.
We probably knew before this game that the Minnesota Timberwolves have that intangible fighting spirit bubbling within them. They’ve pulled themselves out of holes before this season, they’ve scratched and they’ve clawed and they’ve embraced the grind at every turn. There’s no probably anymore. This team has it. They’re fucking teeming with it. This won’t go down in the win column, but it proved that they have it and maybe that means more in the long run.
This team fights.
The game ends 127-120. Before the game even started it was clear that a malignant cloud of adversity was gathering around the Timberwolves and the schedule gods had decided their fate. Not only were Minnesota floundering at the end of a road trip, they were doing so on the second night of a back-to-back, with Mike Conley and Rudy Gobert resting their aging legs, and with weather and travel troubles forcing them to get to Boston mere hours before tip-off. All of that just to face a team who hasn’t lost a home game all season.
Then the game itself unfurled in a dazzling display of aptitude from both teams and all of the uncontrollable adversity surrounding the Wolves perished. For those few hours, it was pure and uncut hoops between the two best teams in each conference. The Timberwolves didn’t wallow in their circumstances, they just dug their heels in and fought. The Celtics didn’t shirk the challenge, either, they left their own spellbinding touches on every aspect the night.
It’s hard to unpack every fine detail of the game, really. So much happened. It was a torrent of exceeding fun and downright miserable and everything in between.
The first half, which seems an eon ago now, was a tough battle that always felt tilted in Boston’s favor and it was only a late flurry of buckets that really kickstarted the Wolves and brought the Celtics’ lead back to a single point as they entered big break. At that point, with the aforementioned toxic gloom of adversity still lingering in the air, we all could have accepted a reality in which a moral victory was secured with a gritty half against a spectacular team.
But this team fights.
As much as any team can own a half against the Boston buzzsaw, the Timberwolves owned the second half. They were dominant defensively, forcing the Celtics away from the paint and fraying out to their shooters to make them take (and frustratingly make) tough looks from deep. They answered back with a diverse scoring punch and, above all, an unquenchable thirst for the fight.
It took a couple of remarkably egregious officiating forays to sever Minnesota’s momentum and halt their rampaging second half in its tracks. Their nine-point lead with two minutes left was always tenuous, but the referees shot the Wolves in the foot and Minnesota responded by pulling the trigger a couple times themselves. After the lead was quickly whittled away, the Celtics found themselves in the lead after the Wolves bungled a box out on a free throw and Jrue Holiday was there to bury a corner three.
But this team fights.
Anthony Edwards forced his way to the line to tie up the game with a few seconds left and Jaden McDaniels shadowed Jayson Tatum into a game-winning brick (one of the few shots he clanked all night) and we headed to overtime. And that always felt like a bridge too far. The Wolves needed to execute better down the stretch in regulation, they needed to be from a bigger market to avoid the refs’ ire, and they needed to finish this game off with the same defense that put them in a position to win.
So, when overtime rolled around, the fight was diminishing. They looked tired and tiredness begets sloppiness and sloppiness begets losing. Tatum and Jaylen Brown scored all of Boston’s overtime points and Minnesota couldn’t muster the firepower or the mental fortitude to overcome the league’s best team.
This team fights, though. Even on a night that dwindled into a frustrating affair.
We already knew that but we learned in another special way in this one. The loss stings, there are plenty of gripes that will emerge from it, but this team fights and that goes a long way in this league.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker: 10/10
If the Wolves managed to snatch this win from the menacing jaws of Boston, it was going to be him who reveled in so many of the plaudits. This was the kind of night that writes names into the franchise lore. A role player stepping into a unfavorable position against an unfavorable matchup and just stomping his DNA onto the game.
It’s always felt like Mike Conley was the stitching that held this whole thing together and, while they certainly needed Conley’s steady hand in the closing minutes of regulation and the entirety of the overtime period, Alexander-Walker injected the team with life countless times throughout the second half.
He made two enormous triples in the fourth (and one in overtime) and warped the Celtics defense with two powerful finishes at the rim. He supplemented that with his usual brand of austere defense on Jaylen Brown. Every stop felt huge and every bucket felt fucking enormous.
His only blemish was an offensive foul in the late-game collapse. A foul that happens 30 times a game and doesn’t get called. A foul that Brown and Tatum and every other big name get away with countless times every night. A foul that reeked of a cowardice officiating crew succumbing to the pressures of big markets and raucous crowds. In that sense, it was scarcely a blemish at all.
Finished with 15 points (84.5% TS), 4 rebounds and 3 assists in 40 minutes — -6.6 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 6/10
Another night where his bombastic brilliance mingled with his youthful inexperience, garnished by what’s becoming some serious warts within his budding game. Like a witch’s brew of fucking weirdness. On any given possession you could be swooning over his intoxicating array of talents or ripping chunks of hair out and chewing your nails to the fucking bone over his foibles.
As we’ve seen before this season, he can win you a game or lose you one and sometimes he does it all in one night. Let’s make it clear, the Wolves aren’t within a sniff of this thing if he doesn’t roast Boston’s defense throughout the second and third frames. They had no answer for him at all three levels and it’s not easy to go toe-to-toe with the best defense in the league.
Conversely, they might have been able to pull this rabbit out of the hat if he wasn’t submarining their offense late in the game. The two free throws were obviously huge to end regulation, but they were two roses jammed between a forest of thorns. He seemingly refused to let go of the idea that he’d be the one to bury Boston, so he devolved into isolation jumpers, drives into nowhere, and turnover after turnover as the game slipped away.
There’s a fine line between heliocentric dominance and eye-melting commandeering. Important games like this shine a light on those who can tiptoe that line better than others. While Tatum proved he is capable of doing so, Edwards proved he is still learning the ropes.
Finished with 29 points (54.2% TS), 6 rebounds, 3 assists and 5 turnovers in 46 minutes — -2.5 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 3/10
He used to be easy to forecast. He was glistening sunshine, warm rays of the stuff, and the occasional frustration cloud creeping in. We’d bellyache when the clouds rolled in but we mostly just basked in the sun. Now he’s every season in one day. He’s a fucking patchwork of elements and it’s impossible to pinpoint what climate will beleaguer him at any time.
So, we still get the sun. We still get the on-ball defense of a divinity. Jayson Tatum will make tough shots because he’s a freakishly talented scorer, but McDaniels was stuck to him like he was his Siamese fucking twin.
However, we’re getting the tornados and the storm clouds much more often these days. The bouts of missed shots are one thing — we know he’s usually uber-efficient and a dry spell isn’t anything to stress over — but the dumb fouls in crucial moments are becoming tiresome and his unwillingness to rebound cost them dearly.
When Derrick White snuck behind him to snag a rebound off a missed free throw, it was a culmination of all of his rebounding woes formed into a dagger that plunged into Minnesota’s collective heart.
He doesn’t feel healthy as he’d like to be. He doesn’t feel as engaged as he needs to be. And he doesn’t feel as impactful as he should be. Games like this expose weak points in a team’s armor and his immaturities felt pretty fucking exposable.
Finished with 5 points (31.3% TS) in 24 minutes — -19.8 net rating.
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