On Monday night, the Minnesota Timberwolves got a much-needed win without their injured stars in a nerve-racking game against the New York Knicks. The Wolves played with good ball movement all night, racking up 34 assists en route to 140 points. They shot 61.4% from the field and an incredible 58.3% beyond the arc. The game looked like it was going to be a blowout, until Julius Randle got hot in the 3rd quarter, scoring 26 points on 9 of 10 shooting. Randle was nearly unstoppable all night, scoring a career high 57 points. However, the Wolves locked in on defense in crunch time, preventing a disheartening loss.
It truly was a team victory. 7 out of the 10 Timberwolves players who got minutes scored in double figures in a game that forced them to keep scoring in bunches despite their early lead. However, Taurean Prince had the biggest individual performance. He was the primary offensive force for the Wolves, scoring 35 points (2nd most in his career) on an impeccable 12 of 13 from the field. Prince hit all 8 of his three point attempts, tying him for second place in the NBA history books for most three-pointers made in a regular season game without a miss. As a reference point for just how impressive that is, only four other players in NBA history have hit that mark. And only two players have hit 9 threes without a miss — Ben Gordon, who did it twice, and old friend Latrell Sprewell.
The Timberwolves needed all of Prince’s points to win the game. Beyond nearly setting a record, this performance was important because the Wolves need points off the bench. It became clear quickly after the D’Angelo Russell trade that they needed to make up for losing his offense in some way other than Anthony Edwards putting the team on his back. While Jaylen Nowell and Karl-Anthony Towns‘ return should remedy much of their scoring issues, Minnesota will need all their players clicking at the same time if they hope to win enough games to escape the play-in tournament this close to the end of the season.
Prince has the potential to be one of the most dynamic offensive players on the roster. He shoots above league average from three and has the speed to get around slower wings on the dribble. He also makes smart cuts that keep opponents defenses guessing. Prince may not be as wowing of a bucket-getter as Nowell, but his game has a lot of nuance that can give the team a scoring punch, while also offering them more defensive versatility. He just needs to play up to that potential more consistently.
That’s why seeing Prince continue to play with confidence after having a rough stretch of games may be more important to the team than the points or the victory alone. Prince had been in somewhat of a shooting slump recently, going 0 of 4 from three in the two games before Monday’s win. He also hadn’t had a game with more than one three point make since February 10th.
Three of those eleven games were perfectly adequate 1 of 2 shooting nights. However, Prince is one of the best shooters on the team, and the Wolves need him to hit a solid volume of shots consistently to keep up with the best offenses in the NBA. Prince is a veteran who generally makes very few mistakes. Still, he had a terrible turnover against the Bulls that led to them losing the game when all he had to do was hold the ball and take an intentional foul. On Monday night, Prince broke out of his slump and made up for his mistake. His scoring won the Wolves the game.
I can’t overstate how important it is that he kept his head up and remained confident. Everyone who has played competitive sports knows what it’s like to make a mistake and let your teammates down. The amount of sleep one loses over their mistakes varies greatly between personality types. However, whether you ultimately won the game, regardless of if it takes place at the park or on an NBA court in front of thousands of people, it never feels good for anyone. It feels especially bad when you can point to your mistake as one of the biggest reasons your team lost. Depending on the gravity of the situation, sometimes your teammates never forgive you. Therefore, the regret that you live with changes how you operate both while playing the sport and in your daily life.
Ben Simmons still seems to be haunted by the open dunk he passed up in game 7 of the 2020-21 Eastern Conference Semifinals. Several things have contributed to his slow recovery including mental health, back problems, and an unsupportive team and the Philadelphia 76ers staff. But Simmons hasn’t been the same All-NBA level player since his in-game mistake. Simmons is more reticent to shoot this season than ever before. He’s averaging only 7.7 shots per 36 minutes, which is down from the 11.2 attempts he took in his last year in Philly, and 13.2 attempts in his rookie year. Mental health and confidence are important factors in how a player performs during a game, just as they are important factors in our own abilities to perform at work or have a healthy social life.
Most of us will never even have the opportunity to fail on as grand of a stage or in as pivotal of a moment as Simmons did. However, most of us can still relate to the draining feeling of accidentally letting those you care about down. We can imagine then how much worse it must feel for Simmons, a famous public figure, who has millions of irrationally angry Philadelphians constantly reminding him of his mistakes on the internet, doubting his mental health issues, and projecting the franchise’s years of pain onto him. Rebuilding your confidence after a tough moment can take a long time for anyone.
The best thing you can hope to do is shake it off, get back on the court, and make up for your mistakes. Some use mistakes as opportunities to learn, while others try their best to put them so far in their past that they forget about them. Regardless, the most important thing an NBA player can do to regain their confidence is to keep shooting, not let the noise distract you, and remember all the things you’ve accomplished that got you to the pro level in the first place.
Prince entered the game against the Knicks with full confidence despite having two rough shooting games in a row, and gave the Timberwolves 35 much-needed points that helped them secure the victory over the Knicks. If Prince’s outstanding game is a marker that his shooting confidence has returned, or has broken out of his slump for good, that would be huge for the Wolves. It would come at possibly the most important time of the regular season.
The Timberwolves are going to need all the offensive help that they can get from their role players while their superstars recover from injury. Edwards and Towns should be returning soon. However, they will likely have some form of minutes restrictions while they get their bodies back to full strength and reintegrate into the system. The Wolves need every win they can get leading up to the playoffs, and that’s going to take role players like Prince stepping up with more consistency.
Moreover, the team as a whole needed a confidence boost after a couple tough losses. If they can hit their stride in these last few weeks leading up to the postseason, that could mean massive things for Minnesota’s playoff success as they try to win a first round series for the first time since 2004.
