The Minnesota Timberwolves’ final game of the 2019-20 season came on a spring night in Houston. Like most games that year, they went meekly, falling to the Rockets 117-111 to finish 19-45 in the COVID-19-shortened season.
D’Angelo Russell led the way with 28 points. Juancho Hernangomez was the second-leading scorer, and James Johnson was third. Jarrett Culver played 18 minutes. That team missed the playoffs for the 15th time in 16 seasons. It was the sixth time in the previous 13 years that the Wolves won less than 30 percent of their games.
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The best part about that miserable season was that it put them in position to win the NBA Draft lottery. That is where everything started to turn for a franchise that could never seem to get out of its own way.
Five years after using that No. 1 draft pick on Anthony Edwards, he scored 43 points in a regular-season finale that had so much more riding on it. The Timberwolves needed a win on Sunday against the Utah Jazz to secure a top-six seed in the Western Conference playoffs and avoid the fraught path that is the Play-In Tournament. Much like the season as a whole, it wasn’t pretty for much of the day, but the Wolves did what they needed to do in a 116-105 victory.
Unlike that regular-season finale in 2020, this Wolves roster is loaded with talent. Now, a playoff bid alone is not worth celebrating. They are on their way to the postseason for the fourth year in a row. They enter these playoffs, Luka Dončić and LeBron James be damned, with designs on making some real noise.
“It’s a great step towards the goal that we fixed at the beginning of the season, which is to get a chance to win the championship,” Rudy Gobert said after putting up 19 points, 17 rebounds and four blocks against his former team.
Listening to Gobert, Edwards and Mike Conley talk about the goals they have, and what they genuinely believe is realistic, is startling for any longtime observer of a franchise that has for so long been associated with failure and dysfunction. The Wolves thought they were close last season, but a 4-1 loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference finals showed just how far away they were.
Now, after a long and up-and-down season, they are back for more. They are past those days of losing on purpose for lottery balls that may or may not deliver a franchise savior. The frustrations of this season have been real and understandable coming off last year’s awakening. A daunting first-round series with the Lakers, beginning on Saturday in Los Angeles, looms.
The Timberwolves have designs on making some real noise in the playoffs, starting against Dončić’s Lakers (Harry How/Getty Images)
It has not been easy. But before the pressure cooker of the playoffs begin, and before they had to really consider a rematch with their nemesis Dončić, the Wolves took a moment on Sunday to reflect on how far they have come. Coach Chris Finch has led them to the playoffs in each of his four full seasons on the job, and this may have been the most challenging one yet. The preseason trade of Karl-Anthony Towns. Injuries to Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and Gobert. The clutch-time failures.
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They won seven fewer games than they did a year ago, and the defense has slipped from No. 1 last season to No. 6, but the offense has leaped from No. 17 to No. 8. They are one of four teams that are top 10 in both categories, which is usually a harbinger of success in the playoffs. And when they absolutely had to win, they did.
“I told the guys, super proud of their body of work this year,” Finch said. “We didn’t make a big trade in the middle of the season to sort things out. We didn’t fire coaches to try to sort things out. They sorted it out themselves. Those guys made the right adjustments and sacrifices, and they figured out who they needed to be as a team.”
And now they move forward in a somewhat similar situation to last year. When the Wolves started the 2024 playoffs, dread hung over the fan base about the prospects of a series against the Phoenix Suns, who dominated them in the regular season. What followed was a sweep so all-encompassing that had analysts saying the Wolves were a bad matchup for the Suns, and not the other way around.
The Lakers turned their season around when they landed Dončić from the Mavericks before the trade deadline in maybe the most incomprehensible deal in league history. The Lakers have a 19-13 record since the trade and a net rating of plus-4.4 in games Doncic has played.
The Timberwolves during that same time frame? They went 19-10 with a plus-7.1 net rating. There have been some bumps in the road, like that second half in Milwaukee, and several others that prevented them from a better seed. But they have been playing some of their best basketball of the season as the playoffs arrive, and now they get almost a week to prepare for what will be an incredible challenge.
When the Jazz game ended and the Wolves retreated to their locker room, they did not yet know who they would be facing. The Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors were finishing their game, which would determine if the Wolves played the Lakers or the Denver Nuggets. The outcome did not matter to Edwards.
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“I don’t give a damn. Whoever,” Edwards said. “We ready.”
Edwards has been a playoff riser early in his career. The team derives its confidence from him. Dončić thrashed Minnesota the last time they met in the postseason. He has an even better wingman this time around. But these Wolves are a little deeper than last year’s version. They have been put through the wringer, and they believe those trials have them better prepared for what they are about to face.
“Everybody feels good,” DiVincenzo said. “This team has figured it out all season long through injuries, guys in and out of the lineup, guys’ minutes up and down and just roles fluctuating throughout the season. We’re a collective group that’s together, and in the playoffs you need that.”
If the Timberwolves can beat the Lakers, they will advance out of the first round in back-to-back seasons for the first time in franchise history. They have come a long way from that low point five years ago. And they still have so much further to go.
(Top photo of Anthony Edwards and LeBron James from February: Harry How / Getty Images)
