There’s nothing quite like a palate cleanser and there’s no team that needed one quite like the Minnesota Timberwolves. The scheduling overlords gifted them with 16 straight games against winning teams and used the buzzsaw Boston Celtics (on the second night of a back-to-back) as the sour zest to garnish the dish. When you consider the travel and the competition and the level of mental fortitude it takes to get through a stretch like that, a palate cleanser somewhat of an essential.
The game ends 116-93. Palate cleansers don’t have the same allure as barnburners or heavyweight bouts — the Wolves have had their fair share of those in the past month — but what they do is allow us all to appreciate how far this team has risen. They only get to have palate cleansers because they’re so far removed from the doldrums. The Timberwolves have been where the Portland Trail Blazers are right now countless times, and it was in those moments where a palate-cleansing cakewalk was naught but a pipedream.
Now they are where they are. Rottweilers in a league littered with chihuahuas. And they are who they are. Monolithic giants stomping their own unique path through a land occupied by dwarfish small-ball fiends. That’s why they’re able to seize upon these palate-cleansing games in a way they didn’t last season. They’re big and they’re overbearing and downtrodden teams like Portland get crushed beneath their mighty hooves.
The Wolves write obituaries for any team who can’t handle big men and the Blazers right now are struggling to handle anybody. They’re in the deepest depths of the abyss and the last thing they needed was to come across a team crawling with hungry behemoths.
The Wolves hammered them inside the paint, they smashed them on the boards, and they clogged up Portland’s offense with their unyielding length. It was over within the first few minutes and it never felt anything close to dangerous. Calling it a back alley beatdown feels generous to back alley beatdowns.
They won because they’re better than the Blazers. Way better. But they’re way better than the Blazers because they’ve found who they are and they’re perfecting who they are game by game. Nobody will be regaling their grandchildren with stories of this night, but a palate cleanser is still a chance to build upon that budding identity.
Mike Conley: 9/10
Right away he forced us to relive the Boston game and wonder longingly about what could have been had his ripening joints been up for it.
His two early triples were exactly the kind of pressure release that the offense could have used down the stretch a few nights back, but his ability to smooth over any creases that develop within that offense is his most important superpower and it was on show just as tangibly as his shooting.
He had 10 assists in the first half. 10. Double fucking digits. 10. That’s tangible impact. And it’s tailormade impact. He dishes it to Karl-Anthony Towns in different ways that he’d dish it to Rudy Gobert. He feeds Anthony Edwards in ways that wouldn’t work for Jaden McDaniels and vice versa. He gives the ball to Naz Reid and gets the fuck out of the way because that’s just the only way to do it.
That’s what was missing last time out and that’s why this organization needs to do everything they can to preserve those aging legs of his.
Finished with 9 points (64.3% TS), 4 rebounds and 10 assists in 20 minutes — +91.2 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 8/10
So often lately he’s been a box score lion and an impact gazelle. This was the inverse. If you look over his numbers you will find yourself underwhelmed, but if you watch the way he manipulated the game without ever over-imposing himself on it you’ll find yourself refreshed.
This game was beneath the entirety of his scoring scope. It didn’t need Ant-Man at his earth-shattering best. That’s just a fact. So he used it as a night to sharpen his peripheral tools instead. He was measured in his shot selection, he was an important knuckle within Minnesota’s defensive fist, and he’s never linked up with Rudy Gobert more often in a single game.
That last point is the most important because it’s still something he needs to get better at. Rather than ignoring Gobert to torpedo at the rim himself, he floated his big man lobs, nailed him with sizzling dump-offs, and capped it off with a ridiculous spinning roll-man pass. This may feel like an unimportant game, but those reps and that trust-building will be important in the long run.
He wasn’t the one doing the killing — he left that to his teammates and they gracefully obliged —but he picked over the carcass like a muscly fucking vulture.
Finished with 9 points (45.5% TS), 3 rebounds and 6 assists in 27 minutes — +73.4 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 8/10
A lesson in staying the course. There’s a lot of that swirling around him right now.
When his first few attempts to make inroads on the game ended with a couple of bricked shots, a few pressing turnovers driving into traffic, and a technical foul for throwing the ball at the officials slightly harder than his plush hands would like, he seemed to be treading along a path that he’s walked too often this season.
However, like the season as a whole, a single game can have many different fragments. He isn’t going to be the same disappointing puzzle he has been so far all season long and he wasn’t the same flurry of fuckery after his strange start.
Ask Anfernee Simons. He was drowning in the River Styx and Jaden McDaniels was the one holding his head under the fucking water. Simons isn’t a bona fide star, but he’s an explosive scorer who’s taken many a defender to the cleaners. McDaniels didn’t allow him to make a single shot all evening. Nada. Zero. Zilch. He was draped over him like a spindly fucking blanket and Simons gave up on even trying midway through the second half.
As his defensive aura grew, his offensive juices started flowing alongside. He made a few shots around the basket, connected on a 3-pointer, and then decided to detonate a stick of dynamite on Duop Reath’s skull.
He’s been a pendulum all season and this game doesn’t prove that he’s going to stop oscillating. Still, all he can do is stack positive nights and, after some rocky beginnings, this was a positive shuffle in the right direction.
Finished with 9 points (56.3% TS), 2 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 4 turnovers in 24 minutes — +80.9 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 10/10
Light work. A dragon in a pigeon race. He didn’t seem plussed for a single second of this game and that led to easy dominance from the first minute to the last. He dipped into a valley for a little while after his knee injury, but he’s climbing back to the peak now.
When he’s cooking, the Wolves are a beast alive and he’s their life force. Edwards might be the beating heart, Gobert might be the strong legs, Conley might be the brain, but he’s the fists. He’s the tools they use to pummel the shit out of their opponents.
It’s easy to take his versatility for granted but it’s important to cherish it once in a while. He’s shooting more and more from deep and he’s a fucking sniper. He’s got insane touch around the rim and any team who defends him with single coverage learns that lesson with a quickness. He wields all of those weapons and only misses a single shot, by the way. He rebounds, he passes, and he’s defending again to top it all off.
On nights like this one, it all shines brightly and you remember why he’s this team’s ceiling.
Finished with 23 points (103.8% TS), 8 rebounds and 2 steals in 28 minutes — +39.4 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 10/10
If Minnesota’s identity is their three-headed hellhound tearing teams apart with their size, strength and skill, he’s the head with the sharpest fangs and the frothiest mouth. When he’s snarling in sync with the others, the Wolves are a single track to Hades and those bigs are the chauffeur into the fucking underworld.
He’s as imperious as we’ve ever seen in this one. Sure, the competition cowering before him was nothing to write home about, but he can only massacre those who face him and he walked through piles of dead bodies as he exited the arena.
It felt like everything was filtering through him. It was offensive actions ending in rolling slams or thunderous lob finishes and it was tyrannic defensive anchoring. On the rare occasion that his teammates missed a shot, he was lurking around the rim like a giant French fucking jaguar, ready to make the points his own.
Portland could have played against him for another thousand fucking minutes and never figured out a way to stifle him.
Finished with 24 points (82.6% TS), 17 rebounds and 2 blocks in 28 minutes — +58.3 net rating.
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