Should and did is a very different proposition for this Minnesota Timberwolves team. They should be better than they are. They should traipse past poor opponents. They should not make the blood of their fans pump so briskly on a near-nightly basis. But, in this one, they through away the should and enacted the did. They did arrive with the mentality that this game against a beat-up and broken Lakers team is as important as any. They did finish their dinner. They did help themselves. Finally.
The game ends 110-102. Another Hollywood scrap. Every win is worth its weight in gold and there is a certain level of desperation that needs to accompany that level of importance. The talent is there for Minnesota, but that desperation has waxed and waned. When it’s there, when it pulses through the night like a beating heart, you can see the bones of the season-long vision. This was one more femur sprouting forth from those bones.
Nothing came easy, however. Nothing ever does. Aside from a tit-for-tat first period, it seemed like the Wolves clung to the ascendency all night while simultaneously reeking of a team ready to throw it away. But, because they were able to calm their perpetually jangling nerves, everything seems a little less frantic than it really was.
They shot better than the Lakers from all quadrants. They outrebounded them. They had more assists, steals, blocks, fast break points and points in the paint. The stat sheet can never paint a crystal clear picture, and this one felt fraught for much of the fourth quarter, but the better team won and Minnesota needed a night where they were clearly the better team.
They did.
Mike Conley: 10/10
Did everything he was shipped over to do. A big fat serving of veteran fucking presence. Where this team can be a bull bucking its way around a China shop, he is like a butterfly drifting peacefully through the hurricane. Never rushed and never pestered. Does the things he can do — the things that the team craves — and never overreaches.
The Timberwolves don’t win this game if he isn’t glued to Malik Beasley’s shimmying hip all night long. Through every screen, every relocation, every movement. They don’t win without him scurrying around the boughs of the tall trees and snatching up half a dozen rebounds. And they certainly don’t win if they don’t have Minnesota motherfucking Mike in clutch time.
Nestles a trey off a short-roll pass from Rudy Gobert to weaken Los Angeles’ knees and nails his fourth silky runner of the evening to lop their fucking heads off. Ice in the veins. Take those jerseys off and give us back our fucking banners.
Finished with 14 points (63.6% TS), 6 rebounds and 3 assists in 31 minutes — -3.1 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 7/10
He’s clearly squelching through a swampy funk. It’s been that way since the trade deadline and at some point he is going to have to reach dry land and run again if this team is going to make any postseason racket. And it’s tough to dry your feet when Jarred Vanderbilt is dogging your heels like a fucking asylum escapee. We know how hot the V8 engine can run and Edwards was singed by it all night long.
However, just like he has been for a while now, Edwards just makes plays. On both ends. When it matters. He does shit when others would collapse under the weight of a scoring slump. He still buries five triples. He still sits down and guards the fuck up. He still blocks Rui Hachimura into a cold dark pit of hell. He makes plays. That’s what great players do, they steal away shafts of light when things are at their darkest.
Finished with 19 points (59.4% TS), 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 4 steals and 2 blocks in 36 minutes — +3.8 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 8/10
Another night of Minnesota’s slender-limbed tarantula weaving his defensive web around his hapless prey. Venom and fangs and flailing fucking limbs. A consistent barrage of screen navigation, rearview contests, isolation jailing and help defense at the rim. It’s almost a foregone conclusion with him, at this point. A defensive gospel burned into the brains of any fool dumb enough to try and score on him.
He wasn’t at his best as a shooter, off-the-catch driver or connective fiber within the offense, but he still left his grim-reapery fingerprints on that end, too. A couple of nice finishes, a catch-and-shoot trey, some slick interior passing, and a putback layup in the dying minutes to wrestle back some momentum for his squad.
Invaluable. Every night.
Finished with 9 points (45% TS), 4 rebounds and 2 assists in 33 minutes — +7.4 net rating.
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