PHOENIX — For the last 20 years, the Minnesota Timberwolves have dreamt of one day. One day, they will swap the dysfunction for stability. One day, the comedy routine will be replaced with a professional basketball franchise. One day, the revolving door of coaches and executives will stop spinning and they will cease being their own worst enemy and become a real problem in the Western Conference.
“Watch out,” they would say. “We’re coming … one day.”
One day has arrived for the Timberwolves. One day is now.
The Minnesota Timberwolves are … what doing it right looks like.
Read that again.
The organization that, hyperbolically, had as many coaches as players over a decade now has an identity. The fan base so far removed from success that it was recently lampooned for celebrating a Play-In Tournament win like Prince was on Lake Minnetonka holding up the Larry O’Brien now has something real to invest in. Barring something that has never happened before, the franchise that has been around 35 years and has only made the second round of the NBA playoffs once, will make it for the second time.
Minnesota won’t be the first team in NBA history to blow a 3-0 series lead, a mark it reached on Friday night with a 126-109 beatdown of the Phoenix Suns. Not this team. This team is too good defensively. This team has too many weapons on offense. This team is well-coached. What you’re watching is as genuine as the smile plastered across Anthony Edwards’ face, or the wisdom of Mike Conley. This isn’t a fluke.
Timberwolves fans, though, are conditioned to not believe it until they see it. Understandable. A lifetime of failure doesn’t turn into trust overnight. But, it’s OK. This is different.
This isn’t just a good story. This is the story. All of the chapters included, no matter how hard everyone tries not to acknowledge how it all started.
“I don’t care what happened beforehand,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “The reality is that we have a bunch of guys who love playing together, play hard and play the right way. They’re young. They let me coach them hard. It’s been fun. That’s been the foundation of being able to grow this little by little.
“A long way to go for us, but we don’t really care what happened before because that doesn’t relate to any of us.”
The irony of the whole situation, though, is that this specific Minnesota team plays as if it was, in fact, them who endured 30-plus years of torture, but with the window of opportunity to right the wrongs of what happened previously sitting there for the taking. The Timberwolves play like they’re tired of being a punching bag. They’re now the gloves and the force behind them. They play like they’re tired of hearing what they might be one day. That day is here. This group moves with great urgency but, at the same time, like it has endured a lifetime’s worth of painful experiences. It is playing like tomorrow isn’t promised, which, in turn, usually means it is.
From Game 1, the Timberwolves’ claws have penetrated the core of the Phoenix Suns, snatched their soul, chewed it and spit it out as if it were undercooked. Phoenix was constructed specifically with this moment in mind, Yet, the Timberwolves have tapped their pants, plucked their $190 million payroll, turned their pockets inside out and have sent them walking home, with just $2 to grab a sandwich on the way. If it feels as if Phoenix has been playing uninspiring basketball, that’s partly because Minnesota has either thrown the first punch or has had a Sugar Ray Robinson-esque counter for every feeble strike the Suns could muster.
Nothing, to this point, has fazed the Timberwolves.
“It’s a testament to these guys in this locker room that everyone is just buying into winning,” said Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns, who scored 18 points and grabbed 13 rebounds on Friday night. “We have an emotional discipline and the capacity to understand that there is going to be ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys, and we’re just going to continue to buy into one another, stay true to us and keep trusting in each other.
“I think that’s what you’re seeing. It’s something we talked about before training camp and media day. It was always about how we feel this team is connected and feel this team has unity. It was going to help us when things got tough, or we got in situations like this. We’re just leaning into those words of buying into each other and trusting us as a team.”
Friday night was no different than the previous two contests. The game was close at halftime and then, in the third quarter, Minnesota decided to stop playing with its food. The Timberwolves outscored the Suns 36-20 out of the locker room. The game was unofficially over somewhere in the middle of that run. No matter how many deep buckets the likes of Kevin Durant and Devin Booker drained after that, no matter how many tiny mistakes the Timberwolves made, the damage was done — in both the score and psychologically.
In this league, there’s always respect for the opponent, respect for the skill level. To the players, nothing is ever over until it’s over. However, anyone who has watched this series so far, knows it’s over. At this point, it’s just a matter of which game Minnesota decides to end it in. Yet, the Timberwolves aren’t operating with that line of thinking. The franchise may not have been to the second round of the playoffs in 20 years, but some players who make up the group’s core have. They’re a big reason this group is on the edge of unfamiliar territory.
“There are points in a game where we feel like the momentum is swinging,” said Conley, who had 15 points and seven assists in Game 3. “We could feel our energy picking up and theirs dropping a little bit. That’s what we try to implement. We’re a team that is going to be physical, keep going and going until, hopefully, you get tired before we do.
“They have a lot of great guys over there, a lot of smart guys, high IQ, talented players … so there’s never a time when we’ve felt comfortable, but I think that is what has kept us locked in.”
Locked in? Like Rudy Gobert, the career 64 percent free-throw shooter who has hit 19 of 22 free-throw attempts this series? Or what about Edwards, the face of the NBA in waiting, whose personality and game is made for the bright lights of postseason basketball. Edwards scored a game-high 36 points, grabbed nine rebounds and dished out five assists in the Game 3 win. He had a bucket for every time the Suns appeared to have one, too. And then some.
He’s locked in, but in “Ant Man” fashion.
“I just want to kill everything in front of me,” Edwards told ESPN after the game.
Basketball and business. The Timberwolves are great at the former while standing on the latter. The Timberwolves. It still feels weird typing it.
In the coming days, Minnesota fans will get to witness something that hasn’t happened in 20 years. And it won’t be another 20 years until it happens again.
(Photo: David Berding / Getty Images)