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The Minnesota Timberwolves were looking for a feather, or perhaps a cherry, a thorny ornament to cap off their glorious 2023-24 NBA season.
A win over the defending champion Denver Nuggets and future three-time MVP Nikola Jokić on Wednesday night would have capped this season in the right light and provided the ultimate drizzle of sweetness for Rudy’s foes. He won his righteous desserts.
That happened.
What happened that a Wolves team was built around the perception of “great qualifiers” defeated through the guy who embodies that expression?Jokić made 16 of 20 shots, many of them straight from Gobert, the leader of Wolves’ top-ranked defense and the presumed winner of his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award after the end of this season.
But the functionality of players coming off the bench is equally vital to the bottom line: an expected strength of the Wolves and a weakness of the Nuggets. In recent seasons, earning the “non-Jokić minutes,” when the MVP is off the court, has been almost a necessity to defeat Denver. But on Wednesday, the Nuggets weren’t just plus six in the 38:28 Jokić played, but plus 3 in the 9:42 he didn’t play, and those numbers come with the game’s late 2:44, the “junk time” when the Wolves’ bench took a seven-point lead after Denver led by 16 points.
In the end, Denver’s bench made the dirty paints that allowed the Nuggets to beat the Wolves in their difficult defensive game. Peyton Watson stopped six shots, adding 3 from Wolves offensive dynamo Naz Reid, who has a habit of shooting at his defender. or beat him on the dribble. Watson blocked it using either of those methods.
Christian Braun played 15:51 of the second half, the third-most of any team member, offering the perimeter length and toughness that allowed Denver to challenge Anthony Edwards early on the offense on the court end and then transition smoothly to the first pick and ant. , who didn’t score in the fourth quarter and only lent a hand after the first half, said Jokić’s presence made driving difficult and implied the obvious — that his passes, especially open three-point shots — didn’t convert.
There are those who will point to Jokić’s lack of decisiveness, pushing Gobert to the ground (Gobert exaggerated the push but it was obviously a foul anyway) chasing a loose ball when Wolves had five minutes and 3 left in the third half, as a key turning point. This is factually correct. A right-handed whistle would have led to loose shots for Gobert instead of the layup that followed through Jokić with Gobert fouling, sparking a 9-1 run in Denver that gave the Nuggets a lead they never relinquished.
Another fact: it happened with more than 14 minutes left in the game and the Wolves were still ahead at the end of the layup and the fumes. The most sensible place in the West is earned by overcoming heartache and adversity and sitting down. The Nuggets are better at this lately than the Wolves.
What do we do now?
Unless the Nuggets stumble against an injury-decimated Memphis Grizzlies team or face the San Antonio Spurs in their final two games, the Wolves will face the Oklahoma City Thunder to determine who is the second seed and who is the third seed. the upcoming playoffs. The West’s three most sensible groups are more than a month and a part apart, a long and titanic war that has propelled them from first to third and in between, while dealing with injuries and maintaining excellence. .
The match is tense, with a stalemate until the third tie-break (a win-loss record in the conference), when the Wolves took the lead. Minnesota also has a slight merit in the schedule for the remaining two games of the season: they play at home against Atlanta (an Eastern Conference play-in team) and Phoenix (currently sixth in the West). The Thunder also remain at home, but opposite Milwaukee (second in the East) and a red-hot Dallas team that is 12-1 since St. Patrick’s Day.
But aside from conceivable merit at home beyond the first round of the playoffs, the standings don’t really matter to Minnesota. The convention is incredibly competitive: five groups will finish with at least 50 wins and another five with at least 45. Last season, only two groups won 50 or more and only two others won 45. That combined quality in 2023-24 creates a playoff opponent. This is truly formidable and, with two games to play, it’s unpredictable lately.
For example, if the Wolves win second place, they will face the winner of the game with seven wins, compared to the eight play-in spots, which lately includes the Suns with 47 wins and the Kings with forty-five wins, with forty-five wins. The five-game winning Lakers and 44-win Warriors are still eligible to overtake the Kings with two games remaining. Or the Suns can simply pass the Pelicans to 47 wins and return to seventh place. Meanwhile, the third seed will face the sixth seed, the Pelicans or Suns are the most likely opponents, but the Kings and Lakers still have a mathematical chance of beating them both.
Clear as mud, right?
But that’s the point. Because the playoff race remains very opaque, even with only two games to play, the only strategy that makes sense is to get your team in the most productive shape imaginable to take on anyone.
Which brings us to Karl-Anthony Towns, who has been out since the first week of March with a torn meniscus in his left knee that has since been surgically repaired. A few weeks ago I wrote that KAT would almost be out for the first time. playoff circular. I’m wrong.
“He’s done an incredible job during the first component of his rehab,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said in his speech before the game leading up to Tuesday night’s win over Washington. Earlier today, it was announced that KAT had resumed five-on-five practices with the team. . Unless he loses, he is expected to try to play in one of the two remaining games of the regular season. “There’s not a lot of time left, so we’ll do everything we can,” Finch said.
Denver’s loss demonstrated some of the tactics KAT misses. For some reason, this chronically mediocre defenseman has always adapted well to Jokić (to the extent that everyone else does), allowing Minnesota to put Gobert into a non-shooter and a “hideout” differently for assist and rim protection. Slightly differently, Naz and Kyle “SloMo” Anderson don’t have the length and weight to bother Jokić much, and the seams of the Wolves defense started to come to the bottom as Gobert became the MVP’s default mission. KAT could have also taken advantage of the three-point opportunities Ant threw in the second half on Wednesday.
On the other hand, Naz makes quicker decisions and SloMo makes better decisions in the KAT game, which promotes the kind of ball movement and respacing that the Wolves have enjoyed while KAT was sidelined, especially with several ball handlers joining possessions into points. a deft poise that becomes thematic.
Finch alluded to that on Tuesday about what the KAT’s reintegration into the rotation would look like.
“There’s a few things that we’ve discovered over the last few weeks that we want him to see, that might be different than the speed that we were betting at before he left,” Finch said. communicated about this kind of thing before. He saw it and was the first to communicate it, which is one more explanation for why we are extremely happy to see him again.
Pushing him to dig into the details, I asked Finch what profits the offense had made while KAT was away and how those gains could be transferred once he returned.
“One thing we earned: A lot of credit goes to Anthony because the attention and pressure on him is greater, and for the most part, I think he did a really smart job of getting the ball off, employing his gravity to create offense for his teammates,” Finch began. “Now we have another user that’s getting that kind of attention, and KAT has to try to make this game really simple and fast. We’ve noticed how much his teammates deserve it. Nickeil (Alexander-Walker) has stepped up his efforts. And I hope that Ant can get merits from the gravity of KAT and vice versa. We didn’t have that in the normal season. So now we see it and believe it a little bit. A little more.
Shorter Finch: No more isolation game dribbling past 3 defenders and longer pauses to monitor the court while the defense restarts.
But Finch’s word is perhaps just as important: “make this game really simple and fast. “One of KAT’s flaws is that it tries to give a dazzling pass when the application plate is the safest and healthiest option. Most of us don’t forget. the side slingshot that belongs to a fashion magazine for its taste rather than its substance; Or the slightly more practical painting over the shoulder and behind the head turns to a smart teammate who also goes from “oh” to “argh. “
It’s not too early to say that the upcoming playoffs will be a testing ground for the overdue growth and maturity that KAT has shown in some really productive periods this season.
On Wednesday, Denver showed the composure and courage of a champion. For more than 20 years, the Wolves may be a team that even goes beyond the first round, but this 2023-24 season has been a rarely combined joy to behold. With two games remaining, this team has already won the second-most regular-season games in its 35-year history.
While those two playoff games are very straightforward in the still-confusing West, the prep frames are trivial. Obviously, getting KAT back and smoothly reintegrating him into the new ball movement is a priority, as turnovers that lead to transition issues are the biggest risk of a brutal fight. playoff failure.
A few weeks ago, Finch said the Wolves needed a top-10 offense, which hasn’t happened all season. Well, in the last 10 games, the Wolves are in tenth place, “elevating” them to 16th overall after 80 games. Much of that expansion comes from lineups involving multiple point guards: a mix of Conley, SloMo, NAW (Alexander-Walker), Jordan McLaughlin (J-Mac) and Monte Morris.
On Tuesday, I asked Finch if the return of KAT would save him those heavy-handed setups, or if he’d stick to them.
“The minutes are getting a little tighter, but our goal is still to do it,” he replied.
A night later, in Denver, that type of team failed to take advantage of the minutes that were not Jokić’s. When my podcast partner, Dane Moore, asked Finch what the team needed for the minutes when Jokić and Ant were out, he didn’t mince words. words.
“We want more movement of the ball. Normally it’s the team that plays well in the movement of the ball: cutting, respacing the field. This programming has been smart for us; Tonight, they didn’t generate much. But that’s part of our recipe and I can’t play Ant for 48 minutes.
There are two games remaining, unlike the warring parties who have jointly beaten the Wolves three times this season: Atlanta, Friday’s foe, is 1-0 and Phoenix, here for Sunday’s season finale, is 2-0 and has a potential debut. Robin Party.
For the pessimists who fear being eliminated in the first round, Bob Dylan gives some advice, courtesy of “All Along Watchtower. “
There are a lot of them here us.
Who thinks life is a joke?
But you and I have been through this
And it’s not our destiny
So let’s not reach out now.
It’s getting late
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