Game Story
There are the haves and the have-nots in the NBA; the teams whose fourth starter could be another team’s best player get to waltz through the regular season while lottery locks spin the tankathon wheel in hopes that it will change. Much has been said about how the Oklahoma City Thunder inexplicably have access to not only elite draft capital but also clearly the single best starting lineup, roster, and bench in the NBA.
There are the haves and the have-nots in the NBA, and then there’s whatever the Thunder
are.
While Oklahoma City can play in any number of different styles and weather any number of different in game short-comings, the Timberwolves do not have the same margin for error.
It’s easy for Wolves fans to try to compare the team’s roster to their Western Conference Final counterpart and eventual champion. Unfortunately, in the same way it was in their five game matchup last year, tonight’s contest felt out of reach as soon as it began. Then, Chris Finch got ejected.
The first quarter saw Oklahoma City build a seven point lead. A mini-Edwards heater in the middle of the second quarter was stifled by the re-introduction of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the convention of defenders preventing Ant’s drives to the paint. In that moment, it was the shocking continued emergence of Bones Hyland to the rescue.
Maybe tonight should be a referendum on the way this team is built. After all, if you want to win a title (which is unquestionably what the Wolves should be thinking), you need to go through OKC. Tonight proved that they can stick around if everything goes well.
Before I get too wrapped up in the doom and gloom, I need to mention that the margin for error that OKC gets is also substantially inflated by the benefit of the doubt they get from the officiating. There was an especially bad moment in the first half when Donte DiVincenzo got a deserved flagrant foul for swinging down on Thunder forward Ajay Mitchell, only for Lu Dort to nearly take out both Naz Reid and Bones Hyland only to be called for a common foul in a near farcical show of inconsistency.
From that moment onward, it was a 15-4 Wolves run in sheer spiteful resistance to what felt more and more like an uphill battle. A Gobert missed dunk felt like it would be the needle that popped the slowly inflating balloon of Wolf confidence. It was not. The Wolves solved their run of mistakes by forcing the Thunder to meet them at that level. A seven point lead was whittled down into a singular possession.
The third quarter came and went, leaving only one clear conclusion: this game would come down to the fourth quarter. For a team that had rarely lived and mostly died by their late game execution, facing arguably the best closer in the NBA right now, this was not the type of situation that anyone wanted.
It feels like that’s the fourth time I’m using the “it should have gone wrong, but then it didn’t” premise. Some might call that hackish writing. I am hoping instead that it conveys how truly uncharacteristic this performance from the Wolves was.
For the first time this season, it felt like the Wolves rediscovered their identity. They were intimidating defensively, even through the ticky tack foul calls. They were moving the ball and creating second chance points against one of the best defensive rebounding team in the NBA. All that is to say, it felt like the time spent lost in the desert of bad losses was coming to an end. Time will tell whether tonight’s oasis was a mirage or not, but for 12 unprecedented minutes, everything fell into place.
I know they had three turnovers in two minutes. I know they gave up a trillion offensive rebounds in the fourth quarter. I know they allowed a 9-1 run. I know they have one of the hardest strengths of schedules going forward. I know all of that.
This season has been a nightmare for the people who think the Wolves deserve consideration as a contender. They fail to beat any good teams. Hell, they managed to lose to a Grizzlies team this week that had more players out with injury than getting rotation minutes. The difference is, tonight was the first time in a long time I was forced to raise an eyebrow and ask if they could in fact win this one. And then they did exactly that. Against the best team in the league.
That’s not a final prognosis. There is a ton of season left to play. Tonight doesn’t mean anything tangible outside of an addition to the win column. And yet, in the long, long path to figuring out how this team can get back to the form they were at to end last season, this is at the very least a massive step in the right direction. I am not the one to laud moral victories. I work six jobs and know how pedantic and condescending it can feel to hear, “No, actually, things are great. You’re just don’t know what you’re looking at.”
I just know how I feel when I saw that Ant shot after a fourth quarter that was shockingly non-apocalyptic. I saw how Target Center exploded. There is momentum now. This type of game injects a different feeling to a fanbase, to a media market, to a locker room.
This win was a return to form. More amazingly, it happened on a night that most penciled in as a loss, myself included.
At the end of the night, the Thunder have three losses. The Wolves have ten. But the Wolves gave them one of those three losses, and they did so by exercising demons. They fought back against the past version of themselves. Hopefully, tonight is the first of many, many more.
Oh, and someone better get Chris Finch one of either anger management classes or a courtside stress ball.
Up Next
The Wolves get a day to rest on Saturday before they welcome the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday, December 21 at 6:00pm CT. The Bucks may have a three-day rest advantage, but they’re 11-17, have lost four of their last five games, and are still missing Giannis Antetokounmpo due to both injury (and trade rumors). This game will be televised on FanDuel Sports Network.
