Playoffs Player Ratings: Game Six | Memphis Grizzlies

Wolves lose the game and the series.

CARLOS GONZALEZ, STAR TRIBUNE

Everything about this game was the bitter and the sweet. The bitter was obvious; it coiled around Minnesota Timberwolves fans and squeezed the life out of them, it crept into their very soul like a dark mist and warped all emotions and each and every nerve ending, it whispered doubts into their ears and sprayed malice into their face. The Wolves lost. It’s bitter. They lost the game and the series and the chance to turn this season into something even more unfathomable. They did it despite holding another double-digit lead and watching as the fourth-quarter Memphis Grizzlies treated them like a hapless salmon swimming downstream. It’s hard not to be bitter.

The remnants of that bitterness will lurk for a long time, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t sweet. Perhaps those same fans couldn’t find it within the 48 minutes of game six and who could blame them, but finding it within the season as a whole is ever so easy. The final whistle not only brought on the stream of bitter, but a flood of sweet. The walloping of preseason expectations, the constant standing up in the face of adversity, the blossoming of the youth and the seasoning of the vets. This was the best Wolves team this side of Kevin Garnett and, even with the besieging bitterness of this moment, that should be celebrated and embraced.

This is usually the part where we examine every molecule of the night, but the preamble to the Player Ratings feels a little meaningless after that one. The game is over and the season with it, but it’s worth just recapping some of the moments that made it so sweet to taste. There were dozens. Most of them feel like they took place an eternity ago, but every one of them made this season what it was: special.

Demolishing the Houston Rockets on opening night set the tone for the team and Anthony Edwards taking Khris Middleton to dancing school for a late-game winner against the Milwaukee Bucks a few nights later set the tone for Minnesota’s young star. He dunked all over Gabe Vincent and reveled in Jimmy Butler’s attitude. D’Angelo Russell eviscerated the Sixers in double overtime thriller. Karl-Anthony Towns dropped a franchise and career-high 60 fucking points. Edwards scraped 50 on multiple occasions.

It wasn’t just the stars, though. The COVID-Wolves rode Greg Monroe’s wave against the Boston Celtics. Jaylen Nowell spent a month sizzling and scorching every opposition bench. Jordan McLaughlin then entered the rotation and turned Minnesota’s bench into a nightly tour de force. Taurean Prince went from unplayable to irreplaceable. Malik Beasley started the season as the worst shooter in the league and ended it with a genuine claim to be the best. The Wolves won six games in a row for the first time since 2004. They led the league in total points and 3-pointers made. They deployed the most aggressive pick-and-roll defense in the league and managed to finish with their best defensive rating since the 2013-14 season. It was a season like no other, twists and turns and peaks and valleys.

They defied every assumption and whistled past every roadblock. They couldn’t quite find the experience and calmness and top-to-bottom talent to finish a series that they really should have finished, but for years we’ve all wanted a foundation that wasn’t made of quicksand. This was steady, solid bedrock. This felt like something sustainable that can be built upon. This was Wolves Back.

Now, with that spiel out the way, let’s rate some fucking players for the last time this season.

*Player Ratings only apply to players who play 10 or more minutes*

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Player Ratings

D’Angelo Russell: 1/10

This was a game that demanded urgency and fire and passion and all of the fucking above. It was a series that demanded it. Russell sleepwalked in, sleepwalked throughout, and had plenty of time to snooze on the bench as he watched a man making $2 million per year outplay him, outhustle him and outwork him.

The shot was as flat as a surfboard and the passing was careless at best and completely disinterested at worst. There should be a scintilla of credit shoved his way for his quick hands on a number of defensive possessions early in the evening, but when Chris Finch put his faith back in him in the final stretch and he stood nailed to the ground on a rebounding chance like a lethargic fucking lamppost, he was hooked with the quickness. Perhaps that will be the last memory we have of him in Wolves colors.

Finished with 7 points (50% TS), 4 assists and 3 steals with a +8.8 net rating.

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Patrick Beverley: 6/10

Like much of his series it was a hodgepodge of madness. For every freaky-fast defensive poke-away, there was an overzealous attempt leading to a whistle. For every timely shot — something he has a true penchant for — there was an offensive possession where it felt like he commandeered it a smidge too much. For every time he squirmed under the skin of his crosscourt foes, there was a time where his mouth wrote some big fucking checks and Memphis happily cashed them.

A snarling little paradox whose antics and legitimate ball-playing talent made him a breath of fresh air for the roster and this downtrodden franchise as a whole.

Finished with 10 points (53.6% TS), 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals with a -20.5 net rating.

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Anthony Edwards: 9/10

Karl-Anthony Towns has handed him some of the franchise’s reins with his spotty nature in big games, but more accurately Edwards has taken them. Snatched the fucking things. His first playoff game was sprinkled in stardust and his final one of the season was dripping in superstardom. He was everything he has proven to be for much of the season, just enhanced and intensified under the brightest of lights.

The first quarter was a vintage boomlet — picking out Ja Morant and hammering him into the cold hardwood, knocking down triples that defy even the wildest of imaginations, hounding on the ball defensively and haring in passing lanes off it. He plateaued a bit throughout the middle stages of the game as he tends to do, but he bounded back into the night down the stretch with another flurry of points and trips to the charity stripe.

Again, the lights also shined brightest on him taking a handful of ill-advised jumpers when the game was fizzling into the fourth quarters that we’ve grown to expect. Blending his shot-making mastery with a tempered mind in the biggest minutes is going to be something he has to conquer in time. Nonetheless, he was fucking gigantic in this game and the playoffs as a whole. That’s the present and the future you’re looking at.

Finished with 30 points (54.5% TS), 5 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks with a -4.6 net rating.

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Jarred Vanderbilt: 5/10

Thought he was far better than his 12-minute allotment suggests, but in this series most of his battle has just been fighting his flaws and trying to bolster his strengths enough to stay on the floor. There were games where he was able to do that and others where he wasn’t. This was the latter. He is limited in ways that we all know, but he has been absolutely essential to Minnesota’s ascension, bringing his lunch pail, his hammer and his fucking hard hat to every single outing. The revving engine and my favorite player to wax lyrical about.

Finished with 3 points (33.3% TS) and 4 rebounds with a +9.5 net rating.

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Karl-Anthony Towns: 5/10

Came into his second postseason with questions swirling around him and left with even more. Not because he isn’t talented and not even because he fell flat on his face in every game, but because his lack of composure and tendency to fly the motherfuck off the rails in key moments was on show far too often. He has blatant pressure points and Taylor Jenkins, his coaching staff and his players were willing and ready to jackhammer them incessantly.

This game was all of the confusion compressed into one evening. Sure, he shoots the ball poorly and never finds a rhythm — that happens to everybody who ever picked up a ball — and he defends stoutly and smartly — that’s been the case for most of the series — but there is a bewildering 17-foot running hook in the fourth quarter and a pull-up 35-footer a moment later. He can make those shots, he is a fucking scoring wizard and we’ve seen over and over he can make any shot, but they aren’t ones that radiate coolness and a willingness to win through basics and fundamentals.

Towns will finish the season as Minnesota’s best player on the season. The franchise pillar. The All-NBA talent. The man who makes 46 regular season wins possible. There are serious questions and they’re going to need to be answered one day soon, but right now those are the facts.

Finished with 18 points (39.2% TS), 10 rebounds and 4 assists with a -4.8 net rating.

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Malik Beasley: 2/10

Outside of a game-one volcanic explosion, he was lost in the molten lava the entire series. No shooting threat, no off-the-bounce juice and a fairly consistent defensive liability. His spacing is important and Minnesota benefited more than meets the eye from Memphis stitching themselves to his hip and following him around every off-ball screen and every darting run, but those things need to be supplemented with actual substance.

It was a weird season. One where he was both putrid and magnificent depending what month you tuned in. In the same frame, he is both a trade piece and a player who could be with the Wolves next season.

Finished with 2 points (25% TS) and 2 rebounds with a +3.0 net rating

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Jaden McDaniels: 10/10

For a roster that isn’t going to actually compete for a championship like Minnesota’s current iteration, the goal of a maiden playoff run is to find something. Find out who will be there in future runs and find out who won’t. Find out where the most gaping holes are and find out where they pummel teams into submission. Sometimes, among those tactical tweaks and future planning, you just come across a gem. A big spindly fucking gem. A lolloping fucking spider who might just become something really special. A Jaden McDaniels.

This, along with game one, was a microscope over his potential. He traipses onto the floor and nails three treys in a minute, saving the Wolves from a sluggish start in the process. Later on, when Memphis was once again trying to push their boots onto Minnesota’s neck, he knocks down another two, grabs a few sneaky buckets off cuts, and packs one on the unsuspecting head of Jaren Jackson Jr., showing some rare emotion for good measure.

Sandwiched in-between his scoring outbursts was consistent throttling on the defensive end. On the ball, he was getting even skinnier than he already is through screens, off the ball he was covering sideline-to-sideline distance while executing perfect closeouts and manly wall-ups. This was his best night ever. This was the fucking future.

Finished with 24 points (111.5% TS) and 4 rebounds with a -11.0 net rating.

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Jordan McLaughlin: 10/10

It’s easy to use his play to admonish D’Angelo Russell (and maybe that’s warranted) but we can only do that because McLaughlin was fucking spectacular. Like Chris Finch’s big basketball brain melted out of his skull and re-formed itself into a shiny-headed mastermind. A pace-pusher supreme, a pick-and-roll savant, a fearless finisher. When he is on the floor and the ball is in his reliable little mitts, Minnesota just feels like a smooth-moving obelisk.

There was a time when he was easily the least effective player on Minnesota’s roster. Harken back to it and it feels like a fever dream. From those lowly beginnings, he spent the second half of the season greasing the wheels of the Wolves’ bench unit and he finishes it with a real shout at being their starting point guard next season.

Finished with 9 points (76.5% TS), 5 rebounds and 4 assists with a -13.8 net rating.

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Play Of The Night

Screen The Screener Action for D’Angelo Russell

D’Angelo Russell needed it. He needed every ounce of Chris Finch’s tactical nous just to find himself a clean enough look to score. He needed this, a crisp screen the screener action where Russell himself sets the back/wedge screen (which disguises a Karl-Anthony Towns post-up )before receiving a perfectly placed and timed down screen from Jarred Vanderbilt.

Unfortunately, the Wolves need Russell to be able to score in ways that don’t always include smart and intricate screening, and he wasn’t able to give them that. Nonetheless, it’s always swell to take a trip into Finch’s basketball mind and Minnesota’s sideline stroller exhibited a shedload of these smart plays throughout the season.

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Thank you so much to all of the readers — a list that has grown so much throughout the season — for tuning into the Player Ratings. I adore writing these pieces and I adore the community following along even more. There will be plenty of content coming all off-season long and I hope to see you all there. Go Wolves.