The Minnesota Timberwolves were looking for a feather, or perhaps a cherry, some piquant adornment to set atop their marvelous 2023-24 NBA season.
A win over the reigning champion Denver Nuggets and their soon-to-be three-time MVP, Nikola Jokić, on Wednesday night would have capped this season at just the right rakish angle and provided the perfect slow drizzle of sweetness as haters of the Rudy Gobert trade were handed their just desserts.
That didn’t happen.
What did happen is a Wolves team built around the notion of “skilled bigs” was undone by the man who epitomizes the phrase. Jokić made 16 of 20 shots, many of them literally in the face of Gobert – leader of the Wolves’ top-ranked defense and the presumptive winner of his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award once this season is concluded.
But equally important to the outcome was the performance of players coming off the bench – a supposed Wolves strength and Nuggets weakness. For the past few seasons, winning the “non-Jokić minutes,” when the MVP is off the floor, has been a near-necessity in vanquishing Denver. But on Wednesday, the Nuggets were not only plus six in the 38:28 Jokić played, but plus 3 in the 9:42 he didn’t – and those numbers include the final 2:44 of the game, “garbage time” when the Wolves bench rung up a seven-point advantage after Denver had cinched the win with a 16-point lead.
Bottom line, Denver’s bench did the dirty work that enabled the Nuggets beat the Wolves at their own rugged defensive game. Peyton Watson blocked six shots, three of them from Wolves offensive dynamo Naz Reid, who is accustomed to either shooting over his defender or beating him off the dribble. Watson blocked him trying both of those ways.
Christian Braun played 15:51 in the second half – third-most of anyone on the team – providing the staunch perimeter size and resistance that allowed Denver to challenge Anthony Edwards early in the half-court offense and then switch easily on high pick-and-rolls. Ant, who didn’t score in the fourth quarter and had just one assist after the first period, said the presence of Jokić made it difficult to drive and implied the obvious – that his feeds, especially for open three-pointers – weren’t being converted.
There are those who will point to the non-call on Jokić, pushing Gobert to the floor (Gobert oversold the shove but it was clearly a foul anyway) chasing after a loose ball with the Wolves up five and three minutes to play in the third period, as a key turning point. That is factually accurate. A proper whistle would have led to free throws for Gobert instead of the ensuing layup by Jokić with Gobert committing a foul, which sparked a 9-1 Denver run 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 when the layup and free throw were over. You win the top seed in the West by overcoming the angst and adversity and settling back in. The Nuggets are currently better at this than the Wolves.
So, what happens now?
Unless the Nuggets stumble against a Memphis Grizzlies roster decimated by injuries or Western Conference doormats the San Antonio Spurs in their final two games, the Wolves will battle it out with the Oklahoma City Thunder to determine who the second seed is and who is the third seed in upcoming playoffs. The top three teams in the West have been within a game-and-a-half of each other for more than a month, a protracted, titanic battle that has churned each of them from first to third and in-between as they weather injuries and sustain excellence.
The tussle is taut, deadlocked until the third tie-breaker (won-lost record within the conference) when the Wolves gain the advantage. Minnesota also has a slight edge in the schedule on the two remaining games in the season – they play at home against Atlanta (an Eastern Conference play-in team) and Phoenix (currently sixth in the West). The Thunder also stay home, but against Milwaukee (second in the East) and a red-hot Dallas team that is 12-1 since St. Patrick’s Day.
But aside from possible home-court advantage beyond the first round of the playoffs, the seeding doesn’t really matter for Minnesota. The conference is phenomenally competitive – five teams will finish with at least 50 wins and another five with at least 45. Last season just two teams won 50 or more and just two more won 45. This bunched quality in 2023-24 creates a playoff opponent that is guaranteed to be formidable and, with two games left to play, is currently unpredictable.
For example, if the Wolves bag the second seed, they will face the winner of the seven seed versus eight seed game of the play-in, which right now includes the 47-win Suns and the 45-win Kings, with the 45-win Lakers and 44-win Warriors still eligible to overtake the Kings with two games left to play. Or the Suns could overtake the 47-win Pelicans and drop them to the seven seed. Meanwhile, the third seed will face the six seed, with the Pelicans or Suns the most likely opponent, but with the Kings and Lakers still holding a mathematical chance to leap over both of them.
Clear as mud, right?
But that’s the point. Because the playoff race is still so opaque, even with only two games left to play, the only strategy that makes sense is getting your team in the best shape to play whomever.
Which brings us to Karl-Anthony Towns, out since the first week of March with a torn meniscus in his left knee that has since been surgically repaired. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that KAT would almost certainly be out for the first round of the playoffs. I was wrong.
“He’s done an amazing job through the first part of his rehab,” said Wolves Coach Chris Finch in his pregame presser before Tuesday night’s win over Washington. Earlier that day, it was announced that KAT had resumed five-on-five workouts with the team. Barring a setback, the expectation is that he will try and play in one of the two remaining games of the regular season. “There’s not much time left so we’ll take whatever we can get,” Finch said.
The Denver loss demonstrated some of the ways that KAT is missed. For some reason, this chronically mediocre defender has always matched up well with Jokić (to the extent anybody does), which allows Minnesota to put Gobert on a non-shooter and otherwise “lurk” for help and rim protection. In slightly different ways, both Naz and Kyle “SloMo” Anderson lack the height and heft to bother Jokić much, and the seams of the Wolves defense began to fray when Gobert became the default assignment on the MVP. KAT also might have been able to knock down those three-point opportunities Ant was issuing in the second half on Wednesday.
On the flip side, Naz makes quicker decisions and SloMo makes better decisions compared to KAT’s playmaking, which fosters the sort of ball movement and re-spacing the Wolves have enjoyed while KAT has been sidelined – especially with multiple ball-handlers sewing possessions into points with a deft aplomb that becomes thematic.
Finch alluded to this when asked on Tuesday about how the reintegration of KAT back into the rotation will proceed.
“There are some things we’ve figured out in the last couple of weeks that we are going to need him to kind of lean in to that might be slightly different than the rhythm we were playing in before he left,” said Finch. “We have already talked about that stuff. He has seen it and he was the first to bring it up, which is one more reason we are excited to have him back.”
Goading him to drill down on the specifics, I asked Finch what the offense gained while KAT was out and how those gains can be retained once he’s back.
“One thing that we’ve gained – a lot of credit to Anthony because the attention and the pressure on him went up – and for the most part I thought he did a really good job of getting off the ball, using his gravity to create offense for his teammates,” Finch began. “Now we have another person who draws that type of attention, and KAT has got to lean into just making that really easy, quick play. We’ve seen how his teammates benefit from it – Nickeil (Alexander-Walker) has really been stepping up. And hopefully Ant can benefit from the gravity of KAT and vice versa. We didn’t always have that during the regular season. So now we see it and believe in it a little bit more.”
Shorter Finch: No more isolation-play dribbles into three defenders and no more long pauses surveying the floor while the defense resets itself.
But perhaps just as important was Finch’s phrase, “making that really easy, quick play.” A foible of KAT’s is attempting the dazzling pass when the utilitarian dish is the safer and sounder option. Most of us can remember the sideways slingshot pass that belongs in a fashion magazine for style over substance; or the slightly more serviceable, over-the-shoulder, behind-the-head flip in the paint to a cutting teammate that too often morphs from “ohhh” to “argh.”
It is not too early to state that the upcoming playoffs will be a proving ground for the belated growth and maturity KAT has demonstrated in some really productive stretches this season.
On Wednesday, Denver demonstrated the poise and grit of a champion. It’s been a full 20 years since the Wolves could be considered a team getting past even the first round. But this 2023-24 season has been a rarely-mitigated joy to behold. With two games to go, this team has already secured the second-most regular-season wins in its 35-year history.
Although what those two games spell for the playoffs is a crapshoot in the still-jumbled West, the prep work is not insignificant. Obviously getting KAT back and smoothly re-integrated into the new ball-movement groove is a priority, because turnovers leading to points in transition is the greatest threat to an abrupt failure in the playoffs.
A few weeks ago Finch made it a mantra that the Wolves needed to become a top-10 offense, something that hadn’t happened all season. Well lo and behold, over the past 10 games the Wolves are indeed 10th, “elevating” them to 16th overall after 80 games. Much of that growth has stemmed from lineups involving multiple playmakers – some combination of Conley, SloMo, NAW (Alexander-Walker), Jordan McLaughlin (J-Mac) and Monte Morris.
On Tuesday, I asked Finch if KAT’s return would foreclose those point-guard heavy configurations, or whether he will stick with it.
“The minutes get a little tighter but it is still our intention to do that,” he responded.
One night later, in Denver, that kind of lineup failed to take advantage of the non-Jokić minutes. When my podcast partner Dane Moore asked Finch what the team needed in those minutes when both Jokić and Ant were out, he didn’t mince words.
“We need more ball movement. That’s generally the crew that has been playing really well on ball movement – cutting, respacing the floor. That lineup’s been really, really good for us; tonight they didn’t generate a whole lot. But that’s part of our recipe and I can’t play Ant 48 minutes.”
Two games to go, ironically against opponents that have collectively beaten the Wolves all three times they have played this season – Atlanta, Friday’s foe, is 1-0 and Phoenix, here for the season finale on Sunday is 2-0 and a potential first-round matchup.
To the doomsayers who fear first-round elimination, Bob Dylan has some advice, courtesy of “All Along Watchtower.”
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour’s getting late
Britt Robson
Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.
