Player Ratings: Playoffs Game Four | Denver Nuggets
Player Ratings: Playoffs Game Four | Denver Nuggets
Wolves stay alive.
If nothing else, it’s nice to get a reprieve. It seems that the floodwaters will continue to pour over this franchise until they make some legitimately massive offseason decisions — potentially drowning them if they don’t tread wisely — but, just for a moment, the players and fans and franchise as a whole are able to find a pocket of air and breath it in. Now that they’ve poked the Serbian bear and his band of Nuggets, the Wolves might not find any more oxygen, but this long inhale filled the lungs with the kind of playoff exultation that this organization has rarely been able to deliver.
The game ends 114-108. The sort of weird game that encapsulates the Timberwolves’ season. For every moment of unadulterated fun, there was a shadowy specter of disappointment and disaster lurking around the next corner. Somehow, in that same vein of typicality, the Wolves toughed one out. They defied the odds that surrounded them from every angle. They didn’t turn the tide of the series, but they delayed the historically inevitable for one blissful evening.
It’s difficult to work out whether they deserved to win by more or they deserved to lose. In many ways, they outplayed the Nuggets for the longest stretches that they have all series, by far. They were able to find something just slightly above their trashcan offense which helped insulate what has been a pretty stout halfcourt defense for virtually the whole shebang. They found ways to douse the Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. flames and, at least for the bulk of the night, they avoided blowing their own foot off with a shotgun. By that measure, they deserved every ounce of the victory.
But comfortable wins have become fragile commodities for the Timberwolves because they’re prone to late-game power outages. Once again that devil crept up their spine, mounted their shoulder, and whispered another clutch-time curse into their ear. Almost unfathomably, they allowed a 12-point lead to slip away within two minutes of game time and only a clanked Nikola Jokic free throw stopped them from letting the game fizzle out entirely. By that measure, they would have deserved the season-ending heartbreaker that they allowed to happen.
This team has a penchant for showing some backbone when it seems there is none left to show, though. Just when they seemed destined to get their throat slit in the overtime period, they rose from the presumed dead and found a genuine hunger to win in the final five minutes. They made a bunch of big shots, they never once went cold, they found ways to get enough stops against Denver’s vaunted offense, and then they relied on their monstrous megastar to bring them home.
That air has never tasted so good.
Mike Conley: 9/10
That glancing bank shot in overtime, the one that gave the Wolves the lead back and heaped an extra pile of kindling onto the crowd, was a sort of synopsis of his time in Minnesota; a little surprising, a ton of wily talent, and a knack for just doing winning shit.
And, oh boy, did he do some winning shit in this one. It wasn’t just the gift-from-the-gods trey, it was the step-back he hit in the fourth and the two floaters on either side of that. It was the eight dimes to just a single turnover. It was the chasing defense on Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., and Bruce Brown. It was just the ever-flowing stream of adult in the room stuff.
He had a little period of weirdly bad plays in the second quarter while Denver were heating up, but when it mattered most Minnesota Mike came through. The Wolves might not win the series but at least we get to see him play basketball at least one more time.
Finished with 19 points (68.4% TS), 2 rebounds and 8 assists in 43 minutes — +12.9 net rating.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker: 10/10
Gorilla nuts. Big fucking swinging gorilla nuts. He was maniacal defensively on Jamal Murray. Again. Don’t conflate Murray’s stretches of hurricane heroism with NAW’s defense. Whenever Alexander-Walker has been standing across from Murray, it has been a fucking bloodbath and Minnesota’s man has come out with ascendency more often than not. Nothing changed in this one, it was shadowed lateral movements, constant contests, and a never-ending battery pack.
All of that was prevalent in the overtime period, all of the want-to and the hustle and the desperation, but it was the back-to-back corner bangers that stole the show. It was those two shots that turned his nuts from normal human nuts to big hefty gorilla nuts. The outcome was shaky all night, but when he rose confidently into those two jumpers, it just felt like it was destined to be Minnesota’s night.
Finished with 8 points (57.1% TS) and 4 rebounds in 39 minutes — +8.3 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 10/10
He’s entering God Emperor territory now. Build a statue and pay it fucking reverence territory. I’m running out of superlatives and flowery prose for him. There just isn’t that much more to say because it’s not about saying it or writing it or reading it; it’s about feeling it. Nothing is more special in this game than a player who evokes emotion. A player that can scoop an entire arena and city and fanbase into his palm and hold them there, frozen in pure admiration. That can only be felt.
And that’s what he did. Again. He made us feel it. When you pore over every inch of the film or every category of the box score you can find flaws and pick nits, but that’s seeing and reading. What you feel has very few downsides, if any. The torrent of drives, the tough shot-making, the defensive playmaking exploits, the flicks to corner shooters and rolling bigs. All of it like a sledgehammer whacking away at Denver’s front door.
Then, after some shaky moments late in the fourth quarter, he eventually busted the fucking door down as time dwindled down. Yanked Aaron Gordon into another dimension, shuffled back, and won his team a playoff game. You could feel that.
Finished with 35 points (57.4% TS), 6 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and 3 blocks in 45 minutes — +10.8 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 6/10
It seems like his floor is raising as the series progresses. He had his moments in this one as a genuine powerhouse on the offensive glass, a foul-drawing machine on his gangly drives, and a quicker and more decisive ball-mover. That’s a lot of what they need from him, especially if he isn’t taking a huge chunk of usage to do those things.
Still, he’s always got a big list of caveats next to his performances. It can never just be uninhabited brilliance. There will always be the voltage that strays into the team’s psyche at times. There will always be the cascade of dumb fouls — ending his night early this time around. There will always be some boneheaded turnovers. There will always be mixed results on defense. And, once again, his four points from halftime onward prove he is still liable to disappear for long periods.
Even on a night like this one where he was clearly helpful in many moments, those caveats reigned supreme.
Finished with 17 points (63.4% TS), 11 rebounds and 2 assists in 36 minutes — -8.9 net rating.
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