Player Ratings: Game Six | Boston Celtics
Wolves win an overtime barnburner.
Statement games aren’t an every-night thing. The season is too elongated and there are too many teams and the entire enterprise lends itself to lulls. But statement games are there, they’re lurking in the shadows ready to thrust themselves upon us when the moment is right. This campaign is still in its infancy, but here was a statement game on our doorstep, here was the chance to stamp something special onto the early season. This Minnesota Timberwolves team rose to the occasion. They captured the moment and germinated within it. They made the statement.
The game ends 114-109. The Boston Celtics are a legitimate, weapon-laden, fearsome unit. They hunt in a pack and they have enough artillery to make any team beat them a dozen times in one night. The Wolves out-hunted them. They won that game a dozen times and then a dozen more. It oozed maturity, it bled tenacity, it sprayed composure. It’s everything this team has been known for not having. Each and every game those worries fade just a little more.
And it was still built on that same defensive bedrock. The Celtics, heading into the night as far-and-away the best offense in the league, were smothered and stifled and strangled. Sure, the fireworks dazzled on the other end of the floor, but the sky was only clear enough to revel in their beauty because the defense made it so. Boston shot 39.1 percent from the field and turned it over 16 times. That shit keeps happening. Everything on that end is dovetailing. Everything is in cahoots. Everything is thriving together. They’re the best defense in the league, this one was just another tick in that box.
The season’s best win. Perhaps, the season’s best game. A barnburner. An unforgettable triumph.
Mike Conley: 7/10
He didn’t have his usual juice as a floor general — Jrue Holiday and Boston’s gaggle of stoppers will do that to a man — but he showed up when it matters because this is his bread and butter. He’s trudged through tougher nights than this and lived to tell the tale. When they really needed him, he was there, a fucking thorn in Father Time’s side.
There are two plays that stand out. Two plays that change the complexion of this night. The silky little floater to keep the Wolves’ nose ahead at the end of regulation and the sprinting transition triple in overtime. They’re plays he seems to make consistently, but they never dwindle in satisfaction. He’s got big, aging, wise nuts and they swing like a pendulum when the game requires it.
He plays great defense, too. It’s worth noting that over and over again. He’s not going to pilfer the headlines on that end but he works his tail off and he is frequently making the right reads, the right rotations, and the right calculated gambles. He stirs the drink. He’s the fucking straw.
Finished with 8 points (80% TS), 2 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals in 36 minutes — -26.6 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 10/10
Words don’t do it justice. Words are fickle and he is concrete solid. Only feelings can encapsulate what he just did.
Not just the sheer joy, but the relief. The relief of finally having a mythical monster in our backyard, ready to tear limbs off anybody the league shoves in his domain. He inspires belief that Timberwolves fans lost long ago, he inspires excitement that sets a fire in the cockles of our collective heart, and, above all, he inspires wins. He grabs this game by the short and curlies and tramples it until it stops twitching.
The whole thing was nutty. He wasn’t alone in the heroics, but he strapped the team to his back from minute one and never let them down. As a scoring machine gun, as a defending basilisk spraying venom all over the helpless Celtics, and as an improved and impactful playmaker.
Then, overtime comes around, the biggest moments of the biggest night this season has offered up, and he takes it to another level. He buries the Celtics beneath an avalanche of fucking awesomeness. Playoff heroism aside, he’s never played better than this. That’s a statement worthy of a statement game.
Finished with 38 points (67.7% TS), 9 rebounds and 7 assists in 38 minutes — +18.4 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 9/10
Told Joe Mazzulla to sit on it and fucking spin. Boston needed to give something up if they were going to stop Minnesota’s other weapons and they chose McDaniels. They begged him to punish them for leaving him open. Sit on it and fucking spin, Mazzulla, Minnesota’s spidery freak just sent you home emptyhanded.
Most importantly, he did so after stumbling and faceplanting early. He could have shrunk back into his low-usage crevice and allowed Boston to out-scheme his team, but instead he just did what needed to be done. He kept jacking open shots up after limping into 3-of-12 shooting in the first three quarters. He held the faith. And then he repaid it in spades. He showered us all in the faith.
He scores 10 points (4-of-5 shooting) in the fourth quarter and then he douses any chance of a smash-and-grab Celtics victory with a buttery mid-range jumper in the final minute. Oh yeah, and he wraps his gangly dragon wings around Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday on defense all night. He torches them with his golden defensive flames. He laughs at Joe Mazzulla’s stupid fucking glasses and goes home victorious.
Finished with 20 points (55.6% TS) and 2 rebounds in 20 minutes — -7.2 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 1/10
All night he was a vacuum, sucking the fun from the building and the game relentlessly. When he wasn’t jacking up bad shots or turning the ball over without a care for the game state or momentum of his comrades, he was fouling with braindead predictability. When he did commit those blatant fouls, he pissed and moaned like the world was conspiring against him. He consistently launched his toys out of the stroller in an attempt to make an all-time night about himself.
He ended the game on the bench and it was a godsend for a team who needed maturity and composure on the hardwood. He brings neither. He never has. And, while he is clearly a supreme talent, he can no longer be trusted to turn up in any capacity when the lights are searing down at their brightest.
On nights like this one, it’s all too tiring to endure.
Finished with 7 points (35% TS), 10 rebounds and 3 assists in 32 minutes — -10.5 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 9/10
He’s the best defender in the league. He’s the best defender on the planet. He’s the best fucking defender in the galaxy. Maybe he is a galaxy. He’s his own cosmos. He is time and space and math and science. He can’t shoot free throws to save his fucking life, but he’s such a remarkable impact guy elsewhere that even that can’t stop him from governing an entire night.
If Boston, with their band of explosive and aggressive scoring options, doesn’t want to even bother testing him at the rim then nobody does. When they did, he deterred their shots or batted them away. When they dragged him out on switches or to contain Kristaps Porzingis, he did everything you could ask him to do. Sure, he got postered the hell out of by Jaylen Brown, but that’s what it takes to score on him right now. Come spectacular or don’t bother at all.
The free-throwing was a downer on what was otherwise an efficient and compact night offensively, but it felt more like an anomaly than an alarming trend. Even so, his impact was remarkably profound. In fact, the team often couldn’t survive when he was off the floor.
What a difference a year makes.
Finished with 14 points (64.6% TS) and 12 rebounds in 41 minutes — +27.9 net rating.
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