The Minnesota Timberwolves completed the kill shot Thursday night.
They ended the Denver Nuggets’ season, sent Nikola Jokic off to whatever offseason horse-stable sanctuary awaits him in Serbia, and won the rubber match in what has become the best rivalry this franchise has ever had. Wolves-Nuggets, Round 3: Minnesota takes it. Again.
While many of the Wolves faithful were confident heading into the series and are not surprised at the outcome. We have to admit that the way this team took down the Nuggets
made absolutely no sense.
This was supposed to be the series where the Wolves needed Anthony Edwards to turn into a superhero. Then Ant got hurt. Donte DiVincenzo’s toughness and shooting were supposed to be core to the Wolves attck. Then Donte tore his Achilles. With the starting backcourt in traction, this was supposed to be the series where Ayo Dosunmu became the emergency engine. Then he was scratched with calf soreness. Kyle Anderson, one of the few remaining players who could calm the offense down in the wake of a 25-point turnover night, also became unavailable.
By Game 6, the Wolves’ depth chart was decimated.
And they still beat Denver.
They beat Jokic. They beat Jamal Murray. They beat their biggest rival. And they did it not with their full arsenal, but with the kind of team-wide, next-man-up, nobody-blinks performance that makes playoff basketball feel like something more than basketball.
Jaden McDaniels played 45 minutes, scored 32 points, and spent the night putting Jamal Murray in a straight jacket. Rudy Gobert owned the paint and helped hold Denver under 100 points for the third time in the series. Julius Randle delivered big buckets when the Nuggets started making their last desperate push. In his first playoff start, Terrence Shannon Jr. displayed zero fear, attacked downhill, and announced himself as someone who isn’t just happy to be here. Mike Conley reached into the past, stole a little more time from Father Time, and gave Minnesota the exact veteran stabilization it desperately needed. Naz Reid attacked the rim. Jaylen Clark came off the bench like a rabid wolverine. Everyone gave something.
This was not a one-man masterpiece. It was not Ant dropping 45 and carrying everyone across the finish line. It was not some fluky shooting night where the Wolves caught fire. This was team basketball at its purest with the whole becoming greater than the sum of its bruised, battered, undermanned parts.
And that is why, as the Wolves prepare for San Antonio and whatever alien geometry Victor Wembanyama is about to bring into their lives, it felt worth pausing for a second and asking a bigger question:
Where does Game 6 against Denver rank in Timberwolves history?
Not most entertaining, not wildest… I mean most important. Most meaningful. The games that mattered most to the franchise, to the fan base, to the story of Minnesota basketball.
For my list, the criteria is simple. Postseason games outrank regular-season games. I don’t care how wild some January double-overtime classic was. It cannot carry the same weight as a game where the season is actually on the line. I also prioritized clinchers and true series-defining moments. Game 1s and Game 2s can be incredible. I’ll never forget Sam Cassell’s “big balls” dance after saving Game 2 against Sacramento in 2004, but those games don’t quite hit the same historical weight as elimination games or series-clinching moments. And finally, the game had to mean something bigger than the final score. It had to shift the franchise, validate a team, break a curse, or stamp a moment into Wolves mythology.
With that said, here are the five most important games in Minnesota Timberwolves history.
5. 2026 First Round, Game 6: Timberwolves Eliminate the Nuggets
This one just happened, so maybe there’s some recency bias baked in. Fine. I’ll own that. But I also think time will be very kind to this game.
The Wolves entered Game 6 without Edwards, DiVincenzo, Dosunmu, and Anderson. They were coming off a Game 5 loss in Denver where they turned it over 25 times and invited every Wolves fan to start nervously considering a potential Game 7 in Ball Arena without their superstar. The stakes were enormous. Lose, and the entire series tilts back toward the best player on the planet. Win, and you send Denver home again.
They won.
And not only did they win, they won with defense, toughness, collective effort, and big moments from unexpected places. McDaniels was magnificent. Gobert was the anchor. Conley was the adult in the room. Shannon gave them real juice. Randle hit big shots. Clark was ready to fight Jokic. The Wolves looked like a team that had been stripped down to its bones and still found something real underneath.
Add in the rivalry, the injuries, the rubber-match element, the pre-game DiVincenzo jerseys, the Target Center electricity, and the fact that Minnesota once again ended Denver’s season, and this game absolutely belongs on the list.
4. 2025 First Round, Game 5: Timberwolves Eliminate the Lakers
This was revenge served 20 years cold.
The Lakers had always been the big brother franchise Minnesota could never touch. The Minneapolis team that left for Hollywood. The glamour team, free-agent destination, organization with banners, superstars, and a national spotlight permanently aimed in its direction. Meanwhile, the Wolves were the expansion franchise that had to fight for relevance and cut under-the-table deals just to land a Joe Smith-caliber free-agent.
It was the Lakers who took Minnesota out in the 2003 first-round and subsequently crushed the Kevin Garnett Wolves in the 2004 Western Conference Finals, ending the best chance that first great era ever had at a title.
So when Minnesota finally got another shot at them in 2025, with LeBron James and Luka Doncic on the other side, it meant something. “Lakers in five” was the chant from the moment the matchup was set. And then the Wolves spent the series proving they were bigger, deeper, tougher, and better.
Game 5 was the exclamation point. Rudy Gobert went full monster in the paint. The Lakers had no answer for Minnesota’s size. And Edwards delivered the perfect final flourish with the Antman/Batman/Superman energy and the “Lakers in five” echo bouncing through the Crypto.com Arena tunnels as Los Angeles fans tried to process what had just happened.
For once, Minnesota wasn’t the little brother. Minnesota was the bully.
3. 2004 First Round, Game 5: Timberwolves Eliminate the Nuggets
This was the curse-breaker.
For seven straight years, the Timberwolves made the playoffs and went home in the first round. Seven straight exits. Seven straight reminders that Kevin Garnett could be brilliant, heroic, and completely trapped by the limitations around him. By 2004, the weight of that history was suffocating.
Then Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell arrived, KG won MVP, and everything changed.
The Wolves won the West. They earned the No. 1 seed. And fittingly, their first-round opponent was Denver, who was led by a young Carmelo Anthony and determined to make the series as physical and uncomfortable as possible.
But the Wolves were too good. Game 5 wasn’t the most dramatic game in franchise history. It didn’t need to be. Its importance was in the release. As the final seconds ticked away, Minnesota finally escaped the first round. Garnett finally got past the wall. Wolves fans finally got to exhale after seven years of having the same nightmare.
It is hard to overstate what that meant at the time.
Before the Western Conference Finals, before the Sacramento classic, before everything else, this was the moment the franchise finally proved it could win in the playoffs.
2. 2004 Western Conference Semifinals, Game 7: Timberwolves Eliminate the Kings
This is 1B more than No. 2. Trying to separate this game from the top spot is like deciding which of your kids you love more.
The Wolves had finally broken through against Denver, but real title dreams are not made in the first round. This franchise needed more. Waiting for them was a loaded Sacramento Kings team, a battle-tested group with Chris Webber, Mike Bibby, Peja Stojakovic, and enough offensive firepower to make every possession feel dangerous.
The series was a war. The Kings nearly stole both games in Minnesota to open it. Cassell saved Game 2 with one of the most iconic celebrations in Wolves history. Then it all built to Game 7 at Target Center, on Kevin Garnett’s birthday, with the franchise’s entire basketball soul hanging in the balance.
KG delivered one of the defining performances of his career. Webber answered. The game was tense, physical, emotional, and alive in a way only Game 7s can be. And when Minnesota finally survived, Garnett leaping onto the scorer’s table and waving that towel became the signature image of the first 34 years of Timberwolves basketball.
For 20 years, this was the mountaintop.
The Wolves would not win another playoff series until 2024. That’s how long this moment had to carry the franchise.
1. 2024 Western Conference Semifinals, Game 7: Timberwolves Eliminate the Nuggets
This is the one.
After 20 years without a playoff series victory, Minnesota swept Phoenix and finally returned to the second round. Waiting there was Denver: the defending champion, the team that had eliminated the Wolves the year before, the team with Jokic at the peak of his powers.
Minnesota stole the first two games in Denver with bruising, suffocating defense. Then the Nuggets punched back, winning three straight and putting the Wolves on the brink. Minnesota answered with a Game 6 demolition at Target Center, setting up Game 7 in Denver.
Then everything went wrong.
The Wolves fell behind by 20 in the second half. The season looked dead. The defending champions were rolling. Ball Arena was ready to celebrate. And then, somehow, impossibly, Minnesota came roaring back.
Anthony Edwards. Karl-Anthony Towns. Rudy Gobert. Jaden McDaniels. Mike Conley Jr. Naz Reid. The entire group flipped the game, flipped the series, and flipped the franchise’s modern identity. It became the biggest Game 7 comeback in NBA history, but more than that, it became the moment this new era truly arrived.
The Wolves didn’t just win. They took something.
They took Denver’s title defense. They took the series. They took their place back in the Western Conference Finals for the first time in 20 years.
And now, with Thursday night’s Game 6 win, they have added another chapter to that same story.
That is what makes this current era so special. For so long, Wolves fans had to survive on one or two memories. Garnett on the scorer’s table. Maybe a random regular-season classic you talked yourself into because the postseason cupboard was empty.
Now?
The list is growing.
The Wolves have won first-round series three straight years. They have taken down KD and the Suns, the LeBron/Luka Lakers, the Jimmy Butler and the Warriors, and Nikola Jokic’s Nuggets. They have reached back-to-back Western Conference Finals and now have a chance to make it three if they can get past Wemby and San Antonio. They are no longer a franchise begging for one moment to cling to. They are building a collection.
Thursday night belongs in that collection.
And if this team has anything to say about it, the list is not finished yet.
