I’m not anti-analytics, as a result of information issues, however there’s no method to consider issues like your greatest participant lacking tipoff as a result of he was a late arrival, or a coach pulling his second-best participant when he’s on tempo for a 70 burger. The Minnesota Timberwolves are an excellent basketball group, by document, the very best within the Western Convention. Nonetheless, if DraftKings pressured you to wager your home on who will come out of the West, I guess you wouldn’t stake it on the T-Wolves.
Whereas Minnesota was nonetheless in a position to deal with lowly Portland, 119-114, on Monday night time, star guard Anthony Edwards got here off the bench as a result of he “lost track of time.”
The win snapped the Wolves’ two-game skid, and mixed with the Thunder’s loss to the Lakers, vaulted Minnesota again atop the convention. Chris Finch’s ability to refocus his team after last season’s 1-4 implosion within the first spherical in opposition to the Nuggets has been spectacular.
Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Cities are coexisting, Mike Conley is an extension of Finch on the court docket, and Edwards always does issues that make you assume he’s a future face of the NBA. He’s taking part in inside the offense and higher but doing it nightly.
He’s solely been held underneath 20 factors 11 occasions this season*, together with final night time, and the Wolves are 7-4 in these video games. (*Technically 12 occasions, however I omitted the one when he left with an harm after taking part in lower than 5 minutes.) It’s a testomony to his selflessness, and the expertise on the roster, that the group nonetheless has success even when Ant is off.
What offers me pause are the mind farts that sometimes accompany Edwards. There was the time he used homophobic language on IG Live, or when he swung a folding chair that hit a couple bystanders after a loss in the 2023 playoffs. I do know Group USA was destined to fail with the underdeveloped, misfit solid despatched to Asia for the FIBA World Cup final summer season, and that it’s virtually a wholly totally different sport, but he was the very best man, and the squad didn’t medal.
Two of three of these issues are inexcusable, and so was final night time’s mishap. I perceive half of Minnesota’s beginning 5 might spend the half-hour consuming bonbons and ingesting wine within the stands, and the Wolves would nonetheless beat this 12 months’s Blazers, however, as Finch identified after the win, Minnesota “absolutely had to have this one.”
Whereas coach-speak is at all times a bit hyperbolic, Minnesota has solely misplaced two in a row twice this season, they usually’re in a decent race for a No. 1 seed. Each benefit is essential if you haven’t executed it but. So that you’d assume Edwards would be capable to make it to the Goal Middle in time sufficient for shootaround, not to mention tipoff. Who is aware of if he was taking part in Fortnite or what occurred? All I do know is Ant is admittedly the largest cause to belief Minnesota.
Conley is historical, KAT’s flailing protection will get him in foul bother within the postseason, and Gobert’s tendency come mid-April is to get performed off the ground. Edwards will dictate if Minnesota fulfills the expectations of a top-three seed within the West.
The Nuggets, Wolves and Thunder might theoretically face some mixture of the Suns, Warriors and Lakers within the first spherical. Who do you assume these decrease seeds will jostle to face? I don’t need to name the 2024 Timberwolves the 2023 Grizzlies — at the least not except Ant flashes an Uzi on TikTok.
March and April are the sloggiest of all of the NBA’s slogs, so I can’t blame guys for succumbing to bouts of apathy. I, too, sleepwalk by parts of my job. All of us do. It’s human. Be that as it could, for skilled hoopers, work begins significantly sooner than when the ball is within the air, and Anthony Edwards has but to earn the identical free move bestowed on different established stars.
