The Timberwolves are back in the Western Conference Finals for the second straight year as they face off against a premier foe, the 68-win Thunder.
The Minnesota Timberwolves are back in the Western Conference Finals. For the second year in a row, the Wolves are just four wins away from the NBA Finals. Their opponent is the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Timberwolves took down the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors in just five games, but this series will be a much bigger test of what kind of team they are as the Thunder present far more challenges than either of the Wolves’ previous two opponents.
The series begins on Tuesday with the series airing completely on ESPN or ABC. Each game in the series comes just two days after the previous one, meaning in as few as six days or as many as 12, we will know if the Wolves are headed to their first Finals, or if their season will again end in the Western Conference Finals.
What to Watch For
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Julius Randle continued dominance
Julius Randle has been sensational for the Timberwolves during their first two postseason series. The power forward has averaged just shy of 24 points per game in the playoffs while adding in 5.9 rebounds and 5.9 assists.
It has been a complete turnaround in the playoffs for Randle, as during his time with the New York Knicks, he gained a reputation as someone who could not succeed in the postseason. That entire narrative has turned around as Randle has given the Wolves exactly what they’ve needed as a second scorer around Anthony Edwards and a solid defender in the frontcourt to pair with Rudy Gobert.
If Minnesota is going to win this series, they are going to need Randle to play exactly how he has in these playoffs and really since he returned from injury at the start of March. The Timberwolves have won 25 of their last 31 regular-season and postseason games since Randle returned to the lineup, with Julius’s emergence as one of the biggest reasons for the Wolves’ upswing.
This upcoming series against the Thunder will provide the largest test for Ranlde. Unlike the Lakers and Warriors, neither of whom had good defensive matchups, the Thunder play big and have a lot of incredible defenders they can throw at Randle.
Randle will need to pick his spots, attack at the right time, keep the ball moving when it needs to, and limit the turnovers to a Thunder defense that is looking to take the ball away. If he can do that, it would be a great first step toward the Wolves springing the upset on the heavily favored Thunder.
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Timberwolves offense vs. Thunder defense
In the first round, the Lakers provided very little defensive resistance throughout the series. The Wolves were able to hunt multiple mismatches and get to wherever they wanted to offensively.
In the second round, the Warriors’ defense provided much stiffer defensive competition. Between their increased intensity level and far fewer weak links to attack, the Wolves struggled to score early in the series before eventually increasing their offensive output to be able to take out a team missing their best player.
The Thunder defense will be another step up in completion. During the regular season, the Thunder’s defense was by far the best in the league. Their defensive rating of 106.6 was two and a half points better than any other team, and more than seven points better than league average. Similar to the Wolves last season, this Thunder defense is not just league-best good, but one of, if not the best, defenses the NBA has seen in recent memory.
Unlike the series against the Warriors, the Wolves will not be taken off guard by the added defensive pressure, but they will have their hands full nonetheless. The Thunder defense does not have any weak links, has multiple All-Defense team caliber players, including Luguentz Dort and Alex Caruso, and has two big bodies down low, Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren, to protect the rim.
The OKC defense plays on a string, uses a ton of physicality, and doesn’t relent at any point in the game. The Wolves have struggled with long stretches of poor offense and will need to limit those long droughts in this series.
Much of the Wolves’ chances of winning this series hinge on their offense’s ability to score enough points against as good of an NBA defense as there’s been in recent memory. If the Wolves can execute their offense, use ball movement, and limit their turnovers, they will give themselves a chance to win the series.
If the Wolves’ offense allows the ball to get sticky or if they start turning the ball over, the Thunder have proven that is a deadly combination for any team that goes up against them.
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Containing the Thunder role players
During this Wolves-Thunder series, it will likely be revealed that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is this season’s NBA MVP. He has had an outstanding season, and any Timberwolves defensive game plan starts with how to slow him down.
Ultimately though, SGA is good enough to be productive almost no matter what the opponent throws at him. Minnesota’s chances of slowing down this Thunder offense lie in its ability to keep the other Thunder players from doing damage.
Jalen Williams is the main player behind Shai that the Wolves defense will need to keep in check. Williams had an up-and-down series last round against the Denver Nuggets. He had two outstanding performances in Games 3 and 7, going for an efficient 32 and 24 points respectively, but also had some stinker outings, including Games 4 and 6, where he scored just ten points and six points, shooting below 20 percent in both games.
The Wolves’ ability to keep Williams from being effective, and Jalen’s ability to fight through that, will determine a lot in this series, as the Thunder don’t have a lot of on-ball creation beyond their top two players.
The other swing point defensively in this series for the Timberwolves is the 3-point output from the Thunder’s spot-up shooters. During the regular season, the Thunder ranked sixth in 3-point efficiency. In the playoffs, it has fallen drastically to 14th out of all playoff teams. The largest reason for this dropoff is that their two highest volume shooters from beyond the arc, Dort and Williams, have shot below 30 percent.
It’s always tough to tell if a poor shooting stretch has anything to do with how the defense is playing them, but if the Thunder can pick up their 3-point shooting and get Williams going in this series, the Wolves’ defense will have a tough time stopping the Thunder’s offense.
On the flip side, if Minnesota’s defense can limit the open shots from deep and keep the Thunder’s secondary pieces like Williams from finding his groove in this series, they will have a solid chance of pulling off the upset.
X-Factor
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Anthony Edwards vs. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
In their first two playoff matchups, the Timberwolves had a distinct depth advantage over their opponent. While the other team was struggling to put together more than five players who worked together on the floor, the Wolves were mixing and matching their players as the matchups needed.
If the Nuggets had taken down the Thunder in Game 7, that trend would have continued. Instead, the Wolves go up against an OKC team that is the only team that has close to the same production off the bench in these playoffs.
It is also the first series in these playoffs where the opponent has both the components to slow down Anthony Edwards. The Thunder have multiple All-Defensive caliber wing defenders, Dort and Caruso, to defend Edwards, along with a rim protector, Holmgren, who can deter shots away from the rim.
Edwards has been fantastic in these playoffs. Aside from a few inattentive stretches, he has given the Wolves exactly what they’ve needed in their first two playoff rounds against teams that had neither high-quality defenders to put on Ant, nor a large rim protector to half Edwards in the lane.
Now he goes up against a team that has both in the same round where a year ago the Timberwolves flamed out, with Edwards’s performance leaving a lot to be desired.
The same goes for SGA. The Thunder have now made it to the West Finals for the first time with this current core of players after winning a Game 7 against Denver, a sentence that sounds all too similar to the Timberwolves of last year. If the Thunder wants to avoid the same fate as the Wolves, they will need SGA to have a great series.
It may be a bit reductive, but a lot of this series will be determined by who performs better between Ant and SGA. It’s two of the most marketable young stars of the NBA going to battle against each other for the first time in the playoffs with each player trying to get to their first NBA Finals.
It sets up to be an incredibly entertaining series. As with everything Timberwolves-related, it all starts and ends with Ant, and fans should be pumped to see what he can do here on the biggest stage as an underdog yet again.