Buddy Hield picked up where he left off in the Game 7 win at Houston by scoring 24 points on 5-for-8 shooting from 3-point range.
MINNEAPOLIS – It was “different,” Minnesota coach Chris Finch acknowledged, that his Timberwolves didn’t know for a few days which opponent they’d be facing in their Western Conference semifinals series.
After all, they had polished off the Lakers in five games in the first round, while the Houston-Golden State series went the max of seven before the Warriors emerged Saturday night.
Uncertainty often can be disconcerting, which is why so many folks at Target Center on Tuesday seemed thrown. They didn’t recognize the home team.
The Wolves who knocked off the higher-seeded Lakers, sticking Luka Dončič and LeBron James with an abrupt postseason goodbye, were nowhere in sight in Game 1. They only had to deal with Golden State’s shooting star, Stephen Curry, for 13 minutes – and even that was too much in the Warriors’ 99-88 victory.
For a team that ranked third in offensive efficiency in the first round and eighth in the regular season, points were hard to come by. Their 88 represented not just their season low but their fewest across 109 games and 13 months dating back to last spring.
Golden State, on the other hand, revealed another layer of resiliency in thriving, certainly more than mere surviving, without their human swizzle stick for most of the game.
Here are five takeaways that have the Warriors playing house money, homecourt advantage already shifted their way heading into Game 2 (Thursday 8:30 ET, TNT):
1. No Curry, no (immediate) problem
The Warriors’ rascally guard grabbed twice at his left hamstring early in the second quarter. He finished out his team’s possession by flinging the ball to Draymond Green for one of Green’s four improbable 3-pointers then headed straight for the locker room, walking cautiously with a Warriors trainer in tow.
Sure enough, Curry’s hamstring strain was enough to do what Minnesota still was calculating – it shut him down. Curry’s line was fine for 13 minutes: 13 points on 5-for-9 shooting, three 3s and plus-10. He helped the Warriors lead 30-20, on their way to a 15-0 run to start the quarter. They never trailed again.
It would get worse before it got better. The Wolves trailed 76-53 deep into the third before straining mightily in the fourth just to get within single digits. They managed that four times, for a total of 79 seconds.
Buddy Hield, the Warriors’ Game 7 hero vs. the Rockets, had his rangefinder going, hitting five of his eight arc attempts and finishing with 24 points (after showing up at tipoff in the wrong uniform shorts). Green scoring in double digits always is a bonus – he had 18 – and Jimmy Butler downshifted Golden State’s attack late to run clock on the Wolves.
With the series ticking off games every other day until a potential Game 6, Curry’s recovery will hover. He limped to the bus afterward and was set for an MRI exam Wednesday. But there wasn’t a bit of desperation in the Warriors’ performance in the opener.
Stephen Curry’s status is day to day, but Steve Kerr acknowledged it’s unlikely he’ll be available to play in Game 2 on Thursday.
2. Edwards shows no fire in this ‘Ant’
As the NBA and its network touted this series, the Minnesota side of the marketing ledger focused on Anthony Edwards, its quick-twitch, three-time All-Star with a photogenic smile and a jaw-dropping vertical. That guy basically was a no-show in this one, not just statistically but in energy and leadership.
So said his coach.
“It starts with ‘Ant,’ he struggled early, and then you could just kinda see the light go out for a while,” Finch said. “I think it was one of those games where he came out with a predetermined mindset of what he was going to do.”
Edwards missed his first 10 shots and did not get a bucket until four minutes into the second half. So, no verbal smack upside the head along the way to change his trajectory?
“What is there to talk about?” Finch said. “You’re the leader of the team, and you got to come out and set the tone in all ways that that happens, and if your shots not going you still have to carry the energy.”
The Wolves’ shooting guard, who had averaged 26.8 points against the Lakers in the first round, scored 22 of his 23 in this game’s final 20 minutes. But his team had lost control of the game by then. He didn’t agree with his coach’s assessment, by the way.
“Nah, felt like I played great defense,” he said. “I just gotta do better on offense.”
3. Death by threes
In the modern NBA, no number of bricked 3-point attempts is enough to embarrass or shame a team into abandoning the weapon. There’s a method to that madness, built on a foundation of confidence from past makes and belief in the mathematics of regression to the mean.
Still, the fidgeting and consternation of home crowds can get palpable, clang after clang. It was one thing for Minnesota to shoot 7-for-47 on threes in the close-out victory over the Lakers, quite another to miss all 16 of its hoists as Golden State was building a 20-point lead.
Seven for 63, a deep-freeze snapped only when Naz Reid finally sank one at 8:32 of the third to make it 55-38? Too little, too late. Minnesota hit five of its final 13 from the arc in its ineffective comeback bid. Both teams finished with 34 field goals, but Golden State had 18 treys to the Wolves’ five.
4. DiVincenzo found a flicker
Donte DiVincenzo looked defeated as the third quarter ended, his heave from the far end missing badly as the horns sounded, his shoulders slumping as he trudged to the bench.
But something got into him to start the fourth. He got whistled for an offensive foul by ref Bill Kennedy, didn’t like it, then got hit with another foul from Kennedy six seconds later pressuring up on the Warriors’ inbounds play.
That little flash of crankiness seemed to light a small fire, with Minnesota cobbling a 13-2 run that cut the gap to nine. But time was zipping by, Butler made sure the Warriors bogged down the pace and Golden State’s eight offensive rebounds in the quarter let the winners double- and triple-up on long possessions.
5. Warriors are small, and defensive about it
Even with the Wolves running unusually cool, Golden State did a fine defensive job. Its zone dared Minnesota shooters to beat it over the top and prevailed. Over the final 36 minutes, the Warriors outrebounded their hosts 39-25. They buzzed the Wolves into 16 turnovers, a bugaboo that had hurt them early in the season, too. And in that pivotal second quarter, they held Minnesota to 11 points.
Finch had seen this all before in video prep.
“These guys do a good job of swarming you, crowding you in the paint,” the Wolves coach said. “They come get you deep in the paint right around the rim. They take charges, there’s always bodies there. Their on-ball competitiveness is high level. Very handsy. You’ve got to make the early play against these guys.”
The Wolves didn’t until it was too late.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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