It’s not good for the mentals of a Minnesota sports fan to live in the past, and especially bad to play the what-if game. What if the Vikings ever had a competent kicker in the playoffs? What if Sam Cassell didn’t break his hip doing the big balls dance before the 2004 Western Conference Finals? And what if David Kahn had just taken Steph Curry? I could keep going down the list, but then I would have to crack 17 beers to finish writing this, and I don’t have that kind of time.
Thursday’s play-in game loss to the Los Angeles Lakers after leading by 15 points in the third quarter doesn’t exactly gas up the inner demons like their laundry list of past failures, but the Minnesota Timberwolves are one win away from a four-month trip to the nearest Sandals. They also decided that the last game of the regular season was the best time to hit rock bottom with Rudy Gobert having a go at Kyle Anderson and Jaden McDaniels taking a swing at a concrete wall.
The Wolves put up a valiant fight for three quarters at Crypto.com Arena, but the Lakers exploited the absence of Minnesota’s best perimeter defender in McDaniels and their interior deterrent in Gobert. LeBron James and Anthony Davis led a Lakers layup line, pummeling the Wolves in the paint, 54-36, on their way to victory and a first-round matchup with the hated Memphis Grizzlies. Karl-Anthony Towns was the only Timberwolf who could put up a fight. The smaller Wolves were relegated to chucking up threes and praying to not be on the wrong side of a signature LeBron dunk in Year 20. It was a strategy that was working until the offense stalled and the threes dried up in the fourth quarter, where Minnesota scored 12 points.
As much as Wolves fans don’t want to admit it, the one man who could have saved the season and fought back against the big bad Lakers is the one guy that we were happy to see suspended for the play-in game after a frustrating end to a frustrating first season in Minnesota. The Timberwolves were 34-36 this year when Gobert suited up and 8-4 when he sat during the regular season. Therefore, it didn’t seem too daunting to face the Lakers without the former three-time DPOY following his one-game suspension.
Towns did his best. But as Minnesota’s only true big, there’s only so much he could do against Anthony Davis, especially once he got himself in foul trouble in the second half. Davis dominated inside with 24 points, 15 rebounds, and three blocks. It’s hard to imagine things would have been as one-sided with the 7’1”, 260-pound Stifle Tower bodying Davis and adding his six fouls to the mix with Towns on the bench or struggling to stay aggressive after picking up his fifth foul with more than nine minutes left in the game.
For all his struggles this season fitting into Chris Finch’s system with Towns and Ant, Gobert is still a dominant force inside. Gobert is second on the team in points in the paint and just outside the top 30 in the NBA. He was second in the NBA with 200 dunks and makes nearly 80 percent of his shots around the rim. Gobert is obviously not the most offensively gifted player in the history of the NBA. But Gobert’s mere presence would give Minnesota an option whose shot wouldn’t almost be guaranteed to get blocked when the venture within ten feet of the rim.
His presence would have also been felt on the defensive end. Towns is not a very good interior defender, to put it mildly, and a poor rim defender. Even though Gobert has dropped off from the dominant force he was anchoring the defense for nine seasons in Utah, he’s still Minnesota’s best option to protect the paint and make opponents think twice about driving to the basket. It was his lowest total since he was a rookie. Still, Gobert led the Wolves in blocked shots with 1.4 per game. Meanwhile, the Timberwolves were seventh in the NBA averaging more than 54 points in the paint per game during the regular season while allowing fewer than 52 per game to opponents.
Up next with the season on the line and their backs against the wall is the young, upstart Oklahoma City Thunder who most fans and pundits wrote off as a tanking team before the season began. The Thunder don’t bully teams with their size the same way LeBron and AD do, but they do score the third-most points in the paint in the NBA. They’re led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who only trails Zion Williamson and Giannis Antetokounmpo in paint scoring, and Josh Giddey, who scores more in the paint than Anthony Edwards. It will be interesting to see how Gobert’s drop coverage matches up with SGA and Giddey’s penetration. But neither rising star shoots particularly well from mid-range, which should work in Minnesota’s favor. That should allow Rudy to drop back and load up to protect the rim.
It will be a different challenge for the Wolves to keep the 6’6” Gilgeous-Alexander and 6’8” Giddey out of the paint than it was with 6’9” LeBron and 6’10” Davis. However, the Wolves have a better chance at slowing the Thunder down with Gobert in the lineup. The Thunder have one of the shortest rosters in the NBA. Their biggest starter is the 6’10”, 240 lbs. rookie, Jaylin Williams, who has had a nice season but should be no match for Gobert in the post. That could work in OKC’s favor if Mark Daigneault decides to go small and plays five-out, Rudy Gobert’s kryptonite that’s sunk his playoff dreams in the past.
It’s now or never for Tim Connelly’s big experiment to pay dividends. For the Timberwolves to make the postseason in consecutive years for the first time since 2004, Gobert and Towns need to live up to their Twin Towers billing at the beginning of the season. And the former needs to dominate the paint against a smaller, less experienced team on Friday.
