The Minnesota Timberwolves advanced in the NBA Playoffs after securing a 103-96 Game 5 win over the Los Angeles Lakers.
Wait? The Timberwolves won?
Well, that’s weird because the entire ESPN brain trust predicted LA winning the series. Nobody had the Wolves winning in a 4-1 “gentleman’s sweep.”
But Anthony Edwards wants you to keep underestimating the Wolves.
“You know what makes it feel even better is they said Lakers in five and the Wolves won in five,” said a smirking Edwards after the win. “I think it makes it feel 10 times better.”
An inspiring performance from Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert helped lead the way. He had a playoff career-high 27 points and 24 rebounds. He looked like a French Wilt Chamberlain out there. Gobert was averaging just 3.5 points before his dominating Game 5.
“Rudy played phenomenal tonight! He played almost 40 minutes tonight! Twelve for 15 from the field. He had 24 rebounds,” a stunned Edwards said while reading the stat sheet. “He was a dragon tonight. Yeah, he was a dragon tonight for sure.”
Gobert’s night was exceptional, but the maturity and selflessness he and the rest of the Timberwolves display are equally impressive and essential.
“Feels good,” said Gobert after his offensive explosion. “Finally getting some of the balls coming my way. My teammates finding me offensively. But it’s about winning. Earlier in the series, when we won and I had two points, six points, I thought we were playing the right way as a team.
“Sometimes the ball isn’t coming, and somebody else is getting wide-open shots. If we’re playing winning basketball, it’s always a good thing for me. It’s the strength of our team. Any given night, it can be somebody else.”
Julius Randle had 23 points and shot another efficient 8 of 16 from the field. Edwards had an uncharacteristic scoring night with 15 points but helped elsewhere in the box score with 11 rebounds and eight assists.
“Julius did a great job calling for the ball down the stretch,” Edwards added. “I would have kept trying to force it, trying to find something, but Julius had it going.”
Mike Conley, Donte DiVincenzo, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker were a three-headed monster at the guard position and combined for 28 points, 11 assists, and nine rebounds. Three of those points came from the lefty veteran Conley from the corner to put the game away in the closing minutes.
The Timberwolves shot a dismal 7 of 47 from three-point range, but Conley was determined to make that vital one.
“Yeah, that’s Mike,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said about Conley’s game. “Mike fought his tail off this series. It was really hard for him to get any rhythm offensively.
“If there’s a guy who gets a steal, makes big shots, and he’s made a ton of them for us – it’s going to be Mike. I can’t remember the play exactly, like who fed him, but when he let it go, I was like, this one finally looks like it’s going to go in the basket. And it did.”
The Timberwolves made up for their poor shooting in Game 5 on the defensive side. They held the Lakers to under 100 points three out of the five games in the series. That’s almost unheard of in the modern NBA, especially going against a duo consisting of the all-time leading scorer James and Luka Doncic.
Good news: The Timberwolves will get a few days to rest up as they await to see who they play from the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets series. The Warriors currently lead 3-2. If Golden State wins, the Timberwolves will get home-court advantage.
The bad news? They’ll be playing a team with championship DNA.