Trusting this Minnesota Timberwolves team is shaky ground. It’s a sheer cliff face ready to give out at any moment. We’ve been there before. We’ve looked upon the drop below and we’ve even felt what it’s like to plummet. But, it’s time to start embracing that peak again. To feel the breeze blowing through our hair. Because, at least for now, this feels different. Even if that drop is still very much a real threat, this team seems to have turned a corner. Mentally, schematically, attitudinally. They’re fun again, but they’re also good, and being good is fun.
The game ends 117-110. Back-to-back series are hard. The Memphis Grizzlies and Sacramento Kings are as dangerous as they are confident. These games weren’t layups, they were litmus tests. Minnesota needed to rise to the challenge, pass the test, shoot their shot. The amphitheater was raucous, the battleground readied. And the Wolves strolled away victorious. Fucking gladiator shit.
And, just like that Memphis game, it felt complete. A couple of shaky moments — it is still shaky ground trusting this team, after all — but it was virtually start-to-finish ascendency, with both ends of the floor synergizing and dovetailing. We are starting to know what Minnesota can do offensively. They’re reliably hitting their shots from deep now (45.9% on 37 attempts in this one) which is only supplementing their season-long ability to relentlessly attack the rim and score once they get there. All night long they were able to lean on that three-level scoring to keep choking Sacramento.
But the key to this one was the ability to sit down and guard. The Kings are a well-oiled war machine offensively. Like an armed Black Hawk on a mission to destroy defenses. They orbit around Domantas Sabonis’ high-post heroics, their shooters are numerous and they run fantastic offensive actions to spring them open, and they have De’Aaron Fox’s scuttling speed to pressure the rim and close out games. They’re a buzzsaw. And the Wolves jammed them up at every turn.
Sure, there was some shooting variance in there — the Kings won’t often shoot 27.3 percent from distance no matter what defense they’re facing — but Minnesota hustled. They scrapped and they clawed and, most importantly, they executed. Rudy Gobert kept Sabonis to flashes of brilliance and long stretches of invisibility while simultaneously protecting the rim from all would-be scorers. And, when Sacramento started avoiding the restricted area, Minnesota flew at their shooters like rabid banshees.
The cliff face never felt so wondrous.
D’Angelo Russell: 9/10
None of the night’s fireworks happen without him. None of the gunshots pop off without him loading up the fucking clip. The first quarter was his. His grubby fingerprints plastered all over it. You could feel Tim Connelly’s hand shaking as he printed out copious contract extensions with the hope his flaming hot point guard would scribble his name on one. By the end of the first quarter, he had nailed all four of his 3-point attempts. By the long break, he had seven of those fuckers without a single miss.
You will rarely ever see a shooting clinic like that. Whether it was catch-and-shoot splashes, off-movement magic coming around screens, or off-the-bounce bangers. His efficiency and effectiveness petered out in the second half, but there is no denying that this is a different version of our polarizing point man. This a stone-cold sniper, and it’s been that way for a while now.
Finished with 25 points (84% TS), 2 rebounds and 6 assists in 37 minutes — +7.8 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 10/10
Just when you think the bad night is coming up, he grabs a game by the fucking nards and steals its pocket money. He had a fistful of turnovers and an air of indecisiveness wafting around him in the first quarter. A stink of that dreaded off night in his first chance to prove to the world that he should pip De’Aaron Fox for an All-Star nod.
But he is inevitable. Fucking Thanos with a mile-wide smile. Notched 16 points and 6 rebounds in the third period and 10 points in the last. They kept putting Kevin Huerter on him and he kept scoring. Gingers do have souls, but Huerter’s might be permanently putrefied after this one. In the end, Sacramento plonked rookie Keegan Murray in front of Minnesota’s metronomic mayhem-maker, and Edwards sized him up and iced the game with a crisscrossing triple.
There aren’t solutions. Not for Sacramento. Not for Memphis. Not for the league’s best defenders and not for rookies or gingers. He is unstoppable. Unfathomable. Unexplainable. Unbelievable.
Finished with 34 points (77.7% TS), 10 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 steals in 38 minutes — +21.1 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 9/10
Of all the point-of-attack opponents for him to face — and he faces the finest — Fox is one of the toughest covers. The dude moves like Sonic The Hedgehog on a fucking crack bender. As the game wore on and the back-to-back started to set into McDaniels’ legs, you could feel Fox’s acceleration and wiggle starting to dust the gangly on-ball shadow demon. But it only felt so noticeable because, up until the fourth quarter, Fox had been incarcerated in Jaden McDaniels’ penitentiary of point-of-attack poison.
He breezed through Sabonis’ screens, stayed connected to Fox’s snaking pick-and-roll forays, and contested shots at the rim alongside Gobert and Kyle Anderson — snagging way more contested rebounds than he usually does to cap off possessions. If he doesn’t exert that demonic defensive effort, there is no chance Minnesota are able to survive his leggy fourth quarter.
And they also wouldn’t be traipsing out of Target Center with another big dub if McDaniels didn’t do what he did on the other side of the ball. Since he missed that game-winning trey against the Utah Jazz, the kid has been fucking clutch. Like he’s on a revenge tour around the Association. Like the grim reaper tapping on the shoulder of unsuspecting defenses. He had a smattering of sweet finishes and standstill jumpers throughout the game, but his transition swoop and catch-and-shoot haymaker in the closing minutes really deflated any chance of a Kings comeback.
Love this kid.
Finished with 15 points (62.5% TS), 8 rebounds and 2 assists in 35 minutes — +18.0 net rating.
Kyle Anderson: 8/10
He’s the grown man of the bunch. While everybody is sizzling, he is there feeding logs. A background piece for most of the evening compared to his comrades, perhaps mostly due to another bout of foul trouble, but when he was on the floor he was the perfectly sticky glue holding all of the dazzling dominance together.
When they needed a board, he’d box out perfectly or grab one himself. When they needed a bucket, he’d slither his way to the rim to draw a foul or feather in a floater. When Chris Finch’s ploy was to get Edwards or Russell going in an off-ball capacity, he was able to make plays for others as a ball-handler or point-forward connector.
He is everything they need. He’s the fibers pulling them together. The synapses telling the brains what to do. The legs pumping so that his fellow arms can make miracles.
Finished with 9 points (72.6% TS), 4 rebounds and 5 assists in 27 minutes — +27.3 net rating.
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