Fresh off a thrilling overtime loss to the Denver Nuggets, the finale of a five-game Christmas Day slate, the Minnesota Timberwolves traveled home to face the well-rested Brooklyn Nets on Saturday night.
To call it a trap game would be disrespectful to Minnesota, actually — the West’s 5-seed certainly has a focused coaching staff aware of Brooklyn’s recent improvements .
But understandably, the Wolves were just tired. They came out flat, and were likely caught off guard by a switch-heavy Brooklyn defense hedging screens and outright doubling Julius Randle. They were also caught off guard by Cam Thomas, returning after 20 missed games due to a left hamstring injury. Ladies and gentlemen, we did not get a good Cam Thomas game. We got a great one. CT scored his first points of the night on a backdoor cut, an auspicious start…
… and led a funky, young bench unit that Minnesota — missing Terrence Shannon Jr. and Mike Conley — could not handle. He checked in with the score 15-15 in the first quarter, and by the time he checked out, Brooklyn was leading 46-37 in the second quarter.
The Wolves managed to take a 63-62 lead into the halftime break. They did not right the ship, though; they had built a house of cards, shooting 56% from three compared to 19% for the Nets. The team about to run away and hide was not the home favorite.
The Nets won the third quarter 36-23, but this time their starters pitched in too. Michael Porter Jr., who finished with a 27-and-10 double-double, scored nine points in the frame, Nic Claxton switched onto the perimeter a bit more and tossed some pretty dimes…
The Nets never really caught a heater, shooting 11-of-40 from deep on the night, but they didn’t need too. They outscored Minnesota 66-46 in the paint; it was ugly with Rudy Gobert on the floor but a massacre without him, the story of the Wolves’ season and part of why Brooklyn’s big bench was so effective.
Jordi Fernández, birthday boy, went ten deep in this one, playing Thomas, Nolan Traore, Drake Powell, Danny Wolf, and Day’Ron Sharpe off the bench. (That meant Tyrese Martin and Ziaire Williams fell out of the rotation.) Fernández evidently picked the right five reserves; all five played between 15 and 20 minutes, with Thomas on a limit.
The rookies really showed flashes: Traore zapped to the rim for two layups, dished four assists to one turnover, and even had the defensive sequence of the game…
Danny Wolf scored 11 points, including a 3-pointer. Drake Powell stayed solid without becoming invisible, scoring seven points and deflecting a couple Wolves passes without committing a turnover.
But it was Brooklyn’s 2021 draft class that shined brightest. Day’Ron Sharpe shot 5-of-5, posting 10/4/4 and making Chris Finch regret every second Gobert had to sit on the bench. The Nets won his minutes by a whopping 21 points, second only to the man of the hour, Cam Thomas.
Thomas went for 30/3/4 in just 20 minutes, and Jordi Fernández could not have been happier with his performance: “He made the simple play every time. And I’m pretty sure the potential assists were were high, because he made the right play over and over and over. Sometimes you cannot control if those are going to be assists, but he just played the right way. And, you know, getting to the free throw line, as efficient as he was, it was impressive.”
It might have been even better than a great Cam Thomas game, but a perfect one. The fourth-year guard was the idealized spark plug off the bench, an archetype only going out of style if you watched this game with your eyes closed, with every trip to the foul line or step-back jumper a smirk to all who believed he’d return and immediately torpedo the surging Nets.
An uncharacteristically smiley Thomas wasn’t worried about all that postgame: “It felt really good to just be out there, back playing. The main thing was just being back and happy out there, feeling good to be out there with the guys, making the right play, making the right shots. We played really well, we got a win out of this, that’s even better for me.”
It was the first 30-piece for a Nets reserve since Tyrese Martin’s shocking explosion in Phoenix last season. Thomas scoring 30 isn’t a shock, but it was tough to imagine his first game back going much better than that.
That 63-62 lead Minnesota held at half turned out to be their final lead of the game. The hosts’ outside shooting fell back to Earth in the second half, and none of Anthony Edwards’ (28 points) supporting cast put a scare into Brooklyn. The Nets are now 10-19, but 10-12 in their last 22 games and looking like anything but one of the league’s worst teams. What happens from here — with The Tank, with Cam Thomas in a Nets uniform, with the progress of the rookies — nobody knows.
Best just to enjoy a belated Christmas present.
Final Score: Brooklyn Nets 123, Minnesota Timberwolves 107
Next Up
Last time Steph Curry visited Barclays Center, things got kinda crazy. The Brooklyn Nets will try to prevent another Curry 40-piece when they take on the Golden State Warriors on 7:30 p.m. ET on Monday night.
