For a Wolves team that was without Jimmy Butler and Jamal Crawford, without typical production from the healthy Karl-Anthony Towns, a Monday loss to the surging Los Angeles Clippers wouldn’t have been all that surprising.
And when considering the Clippers kept up the surge going on the offensive end – shooting 58 percent from the field for the game – a big loss wouldn’t have shocked anyone.
Instead, the Wolves won via some good performances that absolutely needed to happen with the circumstances they were given.
Towns was invisible – partially due to the flow of the offense, and partially at fault of the offense for not getting him the ball – for a majority of the game, requiring Andrew Wiggins to step up in a big way.
Not only did he do just that, he did it for a full 48 minutes, something Tom Thibodeau has been preaching for a long time.
He looked free in the first quarter, finishing tough shots and hitting some impressively deep 3-pointers. Most importantly, he did it at an efficient clip early on.
The shots he wasn’t making during his cold stretch – the close-up shots that he’s made every year since he joined the league – are starting to go in again. It’s unclear why those shots stopped falling, but the sight of those inside finishes is a good one for those that remain on Wiggins island.
But when Wiggins started to struggle to find his shot in the fourth, that’s when Jeff Teague took control of the game.
Nobody is expecting Teague to score 30 points very often when Butler is healthy and Towns is his normal self, but in special circumstances, the former All-Star will be called upon to up the production.
For him to score 30 was especially important after his dud of a performance in the Wolves’ win over Toronto on Saturday, where bad turnovers and missed shots made Thibodeau’s decision to bring him in during crunch time a head-scratcher.
But it didn’t matter Monday.
Teague’s 30 points came on 14 shots, 17 free throw attempts, and was a fantastic showcase of what he does when the opposing defender – Milos Teodosic, in this case – falls for his craftiness.
The best example of that craftiness might not have been one of his buckets, either. It was one of his six assists to a cutting Nemanja Bjelica.
That wasn’t the only play where Bjelica showed his value as the team’s temporary starting small forward, either.
His nine 3-point attempts (and three makes) served well as a floor-spacer for the constantly-driving Wiggins and Teague, and gave Towns and Taj Gibson the chance to play in the post when the situation called for it.
His game was a byproduct of good ball movement, which often started with Bjelica himself taking his man off the dribble.
But eventually, the whole team was doing it. It resulted in one of the better games in terms of ball movement the team has had in a long while. Even Towns, who was mostly silent, had a flashy over-the-head pass to Wiggins early in the game.
But the best example of the passing came at a point late in the 4th quarter, and involved the three most important players in this game: Wiggins, Teague and Bjelica.
The win that put the Wolves in sole position of the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference, matched their win total from the 2016-17 season, and helped distance themselves from the fifth seed and below came on a night when the team was without some of its key contributors.
It required major stepping up from guys that haven’t always been able to do it; not on a consistent basis anyway.
The bad news is how unclear their level of production will be going forward the rest of the year. The assumption is Teague will have some more silent games, Wiggins will occasionally from the field, and Bjelica will return to a low-minute-low-usage role when Butler returns.
The good news, of course, is Butler will be back soon, and Towns will not have many nights like the one he had Monday.
The mark of a great team is having the non-stars – this is not to suggest Wiggins can’t become a star one day – step up on nights when the big dogs are off their games.
That happened Monday, and it is a very good sign.
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