In the last 10 seasons prior to the start of the 2017-18 season, the Minnesota Timberwolves had a terrible record in games that entered clutch time.
In other words, NBA.com says the Timberwolves did not know how to win games that were within 5 points in the last five minutes of the game. This season, they are out to exorcise some of those demons, taking another step towards doing so on Monday night with a messy, back-and-forth overtime road victory over the Miami Heat, 125-122.
After the horrendous performances of the previous week in Indiana and Detroit, the Heat jumping out to an early 9-2 lead with the Wolves unable to make a single shot for more than four minutes was not a reassuring start. Was Karl-Anthony Towns’ reported illness keeping him down, or was it more of the same defensive difficulties that have plagued him early this season? The Heat continued to press their advantage, building their first quarter lead to 9, even as the Wolves found their shooting.
It took a spirited effort from the Wolves bench to stabilize the game. While the all-bench lineup of Tyus Jones, Jamal Crawford, Shabazz Muhammad, Nemanja Bjelica and Gorgui Dieng did not close the gap, they also did not allow it to get any worse. This set the table for the starters to roar back into the game on their re-entrance, with back-to-back alley-oops from Jeff Teague to Jimmy Butler and Towns capping the 14-2 late second-quarter run. This propelled Minnesota into a slight lead, and the Wolves trailed by just 2 points at the half.
The prominent thorn in Minnesota’s side through the first half was Goran Dragic, who showed off his entire arsenal of creative dribbles and shot fakes to create space from whoever the Wolves threw at him on defense. Dragic beat the buzzer with shots at the end of both the first two quarters, and while he faded away in the second half when Butler defended him, Dragic’s torture of all other defenders should not go unnoticed.
As the Wolves gained control of the game in the second half, you could look across the box score and see contributions all the way up and down the 10-man rotation. From Teague, Towns and Andrew Wiggins’ 20-plus point nights to the 34 points from the bench, led by Crawford’s 13 key points, it was the first night of the season of a balanced scoring effort from both the starters and the bench.
There were a couple of possessions early in the fourth quarter featuring trademark questionable-but-crucial-bailout Crawford jumpers to keep Miami runs at bay. Crawford’s last score of the night was a 3-pointer that put Minnesota up 7 with 3:09 to play, at which point the game became the Wiggins and Dion Waiters show.
Waiters continued to get to the rim at will, even after Butler switched to guarding him, while Wiggins found the aggressive scorer he can be with his own moves to the rim, including a ridiculous drive and dunk all over Josh Richardson.
However, his last attempt didn’t drop, and Waiters’ tying layup with 3.6 seconds left was enough to send the game to overtime after a botched final play only got Towns a heavily contested 3-pointer deep in the corner.
Towns got another chance to hit almost the exact same shot in overtime without a defender draped all over him and buried it. It was a key 3-pointer that pushed the overtime lead to 6, followed by a ridiculous 3-pointer from Teague to make it 7. While the Wolves did manage to give up 5 points in about six seconds to put the final score in doubt, they made their free throws and Waiters missed the final attempt to tie it.
‘Escape’ is the verb of choice here, because while Minnesota did largely control the second half of this game, this outcome was never sure. Miami had open shots from the perimeter, almost at will from smart ball movement and predictable missed coverages from the Wolves defense. The Wolves were the beneficiaries of several different offensive plays where a deflected pass happened to end up right with an open shot or pass rather than a turnover, each more ridiculous than the last. There was more than a little luck involved in this win, and that’s perfectly okay.
While the luck was there, credit for the skill in the game has to start with Teague, who had quite the stat-stuffing night: a team-high 23 points, five rebounds, 11 assists and six steals, and his team-leading plus-18 was no coincidence. While he struggled to get shots to drop in the first half and only finished 7-of-18 from the field, the shots that he did hit were enormous in big moments, with each of his three 3-pointers punctuating key moments in the game for Minnesota. Wiggins (22 points, seven rebounds) and Towns (20 points, 12 rebounds) both had their moments as well, with Wiggins’ final eight minutes of offense showing off some of the best parts of his game in a crucial moment.
This win moves the Timberwolves to 4-1 in clutch time games this season. Often in the late stages of the game, this felt like yet another pathetic Wolves collapse of seasons past, with Miami’s 5-point burst in overtime symptomatic of another disaster. Instead, the Wolves were just barely good enough to win, again. They should be better than just barely scraping by, but even in messy, sloppy, lucky games like this one, the Wolves are learning how to win.
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