Player Ratings: Game 81 | San Antonio Spurs
Wolves break records in penultimate regular season game.
So, that’s what it’s like to care of business. The Minnesota Timberwolves have sabotaged their own business all season long, seemingly sending it to the brink of bankruptcy on uncountable occasions. Their business model as an organization in totality has questions that still swirl around them like malevolent spirits, even with just one more regular season game left. But, they’ve shown they are capable of posting remarkable on-court profits and that’s what makes their stock such an intriguing purchase. They just haven’t taken care of their business enough against the league’s bottom-feeders. This, apparently, is what it feels like to do so.
The game ends 151-131. As is the case with this perplexing assortment of talent, they always find a way to nestle themselves into the extreme. Just last week, it was the never-ending stream of gut punches in a loss to the skeleton crew Portland Trail Blazers that will sting for far too long. An improbable disaster that edged dangerously close to impossible. Six days later, they set a franchise record with 151 points against the similarly dilapidated San Antonio Spurs. There is no in-between with this team. Only the roaring highs and the ghastly lows.
If you’ve suffered through the latter, you know that the beginnings of this game felt like it was heading down that same gloomy alleyway. The Wolves were unsurprisingly comatose defensively, allowing San Antonio to fire away on semi-contested or just plain open looks from deep while providing an unguarded runway when they did decide to bypass the long-ball. It all felt like a horrific bout of déjà vu, the same sleep paralysis demon peering into the team’s soul.
Things turned in a way they haven’t often turned for the Timberwolves this season, though. They piled on the points in the second quarter, missing just six shots total for the period, and managed to improve just enough defensively to start to pull away from the emaciated Spurs. As we know, keeping the foot jammed on the gas pedal has been a problem this season, so when they ramped the defense up to another level and continued spraying offensive ballistics in the third quarter, this one quickly became the procession that should have been predictable.
The matinee matchup finishes with emptied benches and full hearts for a Timberwolves fan base that deserved a stress-free afternoon. It’s been far too long since they’ve just taken care of business.
Mike Conley: 10/10
Doesn’t often have bad games and seems to very often have nights like this. The type of player you can set your fucking watch to. Ticks along, never stealing the limelight from his Hollywood teammates, but always contributing immensely in his own way. This was nothing new, just another hour bell ringing out, perfectly placed as always.
When the ball is in his hands, he warps San Antonio’s sickly defense into its deathbed. Paint penetration, pick-and-roll mastery, and the seemingly incessant urge to find open shooters. When he is strutting around in his newly-stitched off-ball suit, he is a shooting juggernaut who finds open pockets to launch from or attacks closeouts to nail floaters or set the table for others.
He’s excellent.
Finished with 20 points (92.9% TS) and 5 rebounds in 24 minutes — +28.8 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 9/10
It’s funny how easy it becomes to pick nits when a player is earth-shatteringly good. When he was just starting his ascension into the otherworldly realms of awesomeness, a night like this would have slapped a perfect score next to his name faster than you could fucking believe. Now, the cascade of first-half defensive miscues are magnified and inspected with the utmost ferocity. Every sleepy off-ball reaction deserves speculation and every time he doesn’t bring his snarling best as a point-of-attack pest it’s an affront to his talent level.
That doesn’t mean that overarching magnificence isn’t there, though. It’s a beacon of golden light that beckons us to bathe in, soak up, and cherish its existence. Much like his defensive exploits, it feels like he never broke a sweat with the ball in his hands. He just calmly reached into San Antonio’s chest cavity and removed their internal organs one by one. His 16 first-quarter points acted as the scalpel, and all night he continued snapping ribs and severing ventricles with an ungodly array of buckets.
We’ve seen what he can do on the big stage — and we hope to see it again in the near future — but it was nice to see him whoop some ass against a cellar-dweller.
Finished with 33 points (61.7% TS), 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals in 25 minutes — +28.3 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 10/10
Light work. Rolled in, made a bunch of shots, sunk his defensive fangs deep into the necks of any fucker in his path, and then rolled out without a twitch ever creeping its way into his blank stare. He has been stacking nights like this on top of each other for some time now and, as we near the final paragraphs of this season, that feels like the most promising chapter to arise from this weird novel.
Finished with 16 points (100% TS), 4 rebounds and 2 assists in 26 minutes — +50.8 net rating.
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