Player Ratings: Play-In | Los Angeles Clippers
Wolves clinch a playoff spot in dramatic fashion.
The Minnesota Timberwolves wanted this just as much as the fans. And they wanted it a whole damn lot. They wanted the big-game experience and the colossal moments and the title of a playoff team. In the franchise’s first-ever play-in game, a war of attrition with the reinvigorated Los Angeles Clippers, they got all of it, and even that seems like a harsh way to put it. They received and reveled in every morsel of experience, every moment under the blazing lights, and the all-important playoff ticket with their name stamped on it.
This season, the winding road that it has been, deserved more than being bundled out in a play-in tournament. Every fan who packed Target Center and bayed relentlessly for more and more of this joyous team deserved more than a stupid technicality striking out their seventh seed. They deserved this — a team who wanted it more than the one on the other side of the floor. One who took every punch to the mouth and launched two more back where it came from. A synergistic band of brothers who win games even when every part of the game points to the contrary.
Game Recap
The game ends 109-104. Where do we even start? It seems like the 48 minutes stretched on for eons. Rewinding back to the start of the evening feels like reminiscing on some long-lost moment from childhood. A fever dream. A repressed memory.
From the tip, Minnesota looked outmatched, they spent the first quarter fruitlessly trying to feed Karl-Anthony Towns and crumbling offensively as their floor shrank and shriveled into a spacing-less nightmare. Thankfully, the Wolves were able to somewhat stifle Paul George with their individual and pick-and-roll defense, keeping them within striking distance with a buzzer-beating triple.
So, we roll on, and finally the Wolves start to get something going — not the rumbling offensive machine that we’ve seen steamroll teams over the second half of the regular season, but something. A faster pace helped, with some bench buckets here and a pick-and-roll bucket there. They won that quarter 33-25, miraculously crawling into the halftime interval with a lead and a somewhat of a wind in their sails.
Third quarter, then, and this time the 33-25 scoreline went against Minnesota. This was the Paul George quarter, the one we knew was coming eventually. The seven-time All-Star had been largely under the restraints of Jarred Vanderbilt, Jaden McDaniels and a spear-pointed gameplan, but he’s a muscle car and muscle cars don’t get kept under wraps their whole life. He revved back into action with 17 third-quarter points via a hellfire of off-the-bounce jumpers and slithering charity stripe trips. With Karl-Anthony Towns still wallowing in the depths of refereeing problems and mental demons, it felt like — even with D’Angelo Russell heating up — the hopes of a play-in heist were slipping away.
And, as the fourth quarter began to unfurl, it continued to feel like that. Perhaps even more so. Towns fouled out as fast as he checked back in and Los Angeles was sprinkling in a steady stream of triples. Trepidation was slowly beginning to creep into the building and the thoughts of the eighth seed were starting to set in. Then it happened, what it was is an amalgamation of so many things it’s hard to put pinpoint accurately, but it fucking happened. The Wolves clawed a little, then some more, all the way until it felt doable again. From there it snowballed, from half-a-chance to a cemented certainty.
It all ended in celebrations and table-jumping and ravenous crowds. It all ended in the seventh seed, a low bar for some but one that has been near-on impossible for the Minnesota Timberwolves to clear for the best part of two decades. Damn it feels good to clear that bar again.
D’Angelo Russell: 10/10
There when you need him. He plateaued after the All-Star break and then nosedived off a fucking cliff in the regular season crescendo, but he was there when the Wolves needed him. Boy, did they need him. With Towns predisposed in his own head, Russell was the eldest statesman in the big three, they needed every ounce of his herky-jerky craft, his tough shot-making and his big fucking fourth-quarter nuts.
He spent the first quarter trying to feed Towns and play table-setter, but when it became clear that they needed him to be more than that during the second period then he started doing his thing. A pull-up trey, a feathery floater, a fallaway baseline jumper. His thing. Then, in winning time, he just put those big hairy boulders on the table. Have a fucking look at them. Another driving floater while down six, the running triple to finally take the lead, the saucy long-two to put the Clippers on ice. Big time players make big time plays.
Finished with 29 points (67.4% TS), 5rebounds, 6 assists and 3 steals with a +12.6 net rating.
Patrick Beverley: 10/10
We’ve been waiting for this moment, waiting to see just how deep his screw can twist. It’s almost impossible to imagine that he can crank up the maniacal mayhem that he provided night-in and night-out during the regular season, but he could. He did. He cranked it so fucking high that his former team split at the seams and crumbled into a big ball of nothingness.
As usual, his impact transcends statistics. Statistics are a mere piece of gum on the sole of his presence. Sure, he knocks down a triple (and a crazier one that didn’t end up counting) and gets to the coalface a few times. He rebounds the ball like a demon and he throws a few precise dimes, but it’s just more than that. He’s more than that. He is the metronome, the talisman, the pumping heart. The poke-aways, the incessant and hilarious trash talk, the ability to spin the crowd into a shark-infested feeding frenzy. That’s a lot of words, but there really aren’t any to fully encompass the Pat Bev experience. You just have to live it.
Finished with 7 points (35.9% TS), 11 rebounds and 3 assists with a -7.5 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 10/10
The one, Jack. The fucking one, man. He isn’t the calloused hands of the franchise that feels the need to grip onto and carry around the team’s woeful history. He is the fresh hands, juggling and throwing almighty hooks without a droplet of care for what came before. The hands that had no right to snatch the biggest game of their lives away but did it with such aplomb and grace that eyes around the fan base melted into an enormous, Target-Center-shaped pool.
If there was ever any pressure, one look from Edwards had it wilting into nothing. When the game was slipping away early on he was there with a trio of triples and some scalpel-sharp drives. When it was there to be won he was there with more long-bombs, more downhill forays and more free throws. He was active and alert and venomous on defense all evening. He ends up on the scorer’s table as well, with adoration raining down on him like a fucking tropical storm. The one, Jack.
Finished with 30 points (63.5% TS), 5 rebounds and 2 assists with a +4.1 net rating.
Jarred Vanderbilt: 7/10
The game didn’t suit him. Mind you, he will never stop forcing his round peg into any square hole stupid enough to be in his fucking way, he keeps hustling like a madman for rebounds and his grapple with Paul George had a couple of shining moments, but it’s impossible to ignore what his skillset does to Karl-Anthony Towns’ game.
Ivica Zubac just doesn’t respect his offensive game at all. Nada. Zilch. The big dopey fuck just ignores him all night and that puts Towns in an unbreakable vice grip. The Clippers game-planned and executed brilliantly, and Vanderbilt, in spite of his hustling heroics, was the pressure point that they deemed worthy of a hammering.
Finished with 3 points (52.1% TS) and 10 rebounds with a -7.0 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 0/10
You saw it. There is no point poring over every molecule of it. You’ve seen it before, too, It’s been a big black stain looming on the horizon all season long and we’ve willfully ignored it and lived in the bliss that comes with the sweet, sweet ignorance. In this one, the biggest game of the season by far, his inability to not only deal with small-big double-teams, but cope with the subsequent mental struggles that accompany that scheme, ate him alive and spat out his picked-clean bones. In short, he imploded.
He was wiped from basketball existence by Tyronn Lue and the Clippers and he melted into a whiny fucking mess trying to escape the purgatory. He grouched about bad calls, he bellyached about the obvious ones, and he ended the night apathetically on the pine with a scowl instead of a giddy temperament for his teammates. Thankfully, those same teammates pulled through and he will have a chance to repair his badly tarnished reputation against the Memphis Grizzlies — he owes those fuckers a beer for that, every single one of them.
Finished with 11 points (40.3% TS), 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals with a -29.2 net rating.
Malik Beasley: 8/10
Timely. Never overwhelming (and we know he can be, in the good and bad sense) but just fucking timely, man. He sinks a soft runner in the first quarter when things were beginning to spiral a little, he hits one, two, three 3-pointers and all of them as timely as the last. He makes a couple of great defensive plays individually and he is constantly alert as the low-man and the help-the-helper being asked defensive questions. A really important cameo.
Finished with 12 points (56.4% TS) and 6 rebounds with a +10.1 net rating.
Naz Reid: 10/10
Next man up. A dumb cliché. A mantra that works more as a turn of phrase than something that can be easily implemented. He isn’t Karl-Anthony Towns and whenever he is asked to be he might as well be zip-tied to the train tracks while the lights close in on him. When KAT imploded in this one, it felt like Reid would be the one paying for his mistakes. Instead, he cleaned those fuckers up. The fucking janitor that he is. Naz Reid.
I’ve often been harsh on him this season, mostly for good reason as he’s been Minnesota’s worst rotation player for some time, but it’ll be hard for me to extinguish the fourth-quarter catch-and-shoot triple and the bruising putback that followed it out of my memory bank. Important shit. Janitor shit.
Finished with 8 points (45.7% TS) and 4 rebounds with a +43.2 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 7/10
Had a weird game. Spent most of the night fighting off a hoard of illegal screens and stray arms from Pushoff P and his merry band of bricklayers, but it never deterred him. He walked through a fucking tornado of limbs and torsos to cement a great defensive night, but there were some missteps on the other side of the ball. A bunch of missed layups at crucial times and stagnant ball-handling attempts were littered between his important end-of-first-quarter triple and pull-up mid-range jumper. In the end, the job he did defensively means more than any of his mistakes did, and that’s what will be remembered.
Finished with 6 points (43.6% TS), 3 rebounds, and 2 steals and a +19.6 net rating.
Play Of The Night
Horns Out Pistol Keep For D’Angelo Russell
Despite the fact that this game felt like a blink-first-if-you-dare chess match between the two head coaches, there really weren’t a ton of set plays that ended in buckets for the Wolves. They did try on a few occasions to get things going in that sense (although less than usual) but Los Angeles was diligently shutting down every avenue all night long. This ‘Pistol’ action out of Minnesota’s favorite ‘Horns Out’ set was a goodie, however, and the perfect way to keep D’Angelo Russell cooking in the mid-range.
Even this, the play resulting in a wide-open jumper, comes from a sorta bungled version of the set. Usually, the Wolves would be trying to get Anthony Edwards running past Jarred Vanderbilt and onto the wing on Vanderbilt’s side of the floor, but Marcus Morris Sr. shut off that cut and forced Edwards back out to where he came from. So, Vando and D-Lo go into their counteraction, an elbow pistol (give and go) which Vanderbilt ‘keeps’ and allows Russell to zip back to the open space on the floor. Because Vanderbilt is screening on the final handoff and likely to roll to the rim, Ivica Zubac is preoccupied and that allowed Russell the time he needs to get off his shot. Not clean, nothing was on the night, but it worked and that’s all they needed.
Great review Jake, game for a few of our Woves as well! Kat better get used to being scorched by national media, we’re one hell of a forgiving group if any of us give him a pass on his psychic dwarf continuance, good call!!