Nickeil Alexander-Walker brought the ball up and dumped it off to Anthony Edwards with 6:20 remaining in the third quarter of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Game 3 loss to the Dallas Mavericks. Naz Reid had set a high screen for Edwards, who switched onto Josh Green. Edwards gathered the ball, blew by Green, and posterized Daniel Gafford to make it 77-73 Dallas.
Edwards hit a step-back two and a 15-footer on the next two possessions to make it 77-77 with just under five minutes to go in the third. He had hit the nearly unguardable turnaround jumper he used against the Denver Nuggets in Round 2 again. He had the burst he had been missing since his hard fall in the third quarter of Game 6 against Denver.
At that moment, it seemed like the Wolves might steal Game 3 and keep their playoff hopes alive. Edwards had kicked Dallas’ saloon doors open. He didn’t need a six-shooter or a badge to assert his authority. It looked like he was going to take over and lead the Timberwolves to victory. “I was telling him throughout that little stretch that he had to keep going,” said Reid, “that he wasn’t tired because we need that.”
Tim Connelly built the Timberwolves to beat Denver, and they did. However, Dallas has beaten them three consecutive times to open the series, and no team has come back from a 3-0 best-of-seven deficit in NBA history (0-154). Wolves-Nuggets felt like the Western Conference Finals, but the Mavericks are standing in Minnesota’s path to the Finals.
Did Connelly build a team that can beat the Nuggets but not the Mavs? Or are the Wolves falling victim to circumstance?
“We have that belief against anyone,” said Rudy Gobert when a reporter asked if the Wolves could beat Dallas if they were at their best.
“It’s a great thing, but it can also be a thing that’s not great when we beat ourselves. Obviously, these guys are a really good team, and they obviously will beat you, like they did tonight in the last few minutes. But we truly believe that if we just stick to who we are, which is a defensive team, and we make the right play offensively, then we give ourselves great chances to win any game against anyone.”
There’s no way to spin a 3-0 deficit positively. The bigger question is whether the Mavericks have cracked Minnesota’s code or if the Wolves are beating themselves. The Timberwolves are in trouble if Dallas has created a blueprint to undermine their size. Given how many players are under long-term contracts, it will be difficult for the Wolves to overhaul their roster next year.
However, the Wolves may be their own worst enemy right now. Edwards, 22, might be in the middle of a valuable learning experience while playing banged up. Karl-Anthony Towns went 0 for 8 from three in Game 3, and the Mavs have held him under 20 points in every game this series. Conversely, they haven’t been able to contain Dallas’ experienced guards. Luka Doncic is averaging 32.5 points, and Kyrie Irving is averaging 25.
“They got to their spots, they would rise up,” said Chris Finch. “They’re great players. They’re beating us one-on-one at the moment. When we committed multiple guys to them in the first half, we bled from the three-point line.”
Still, Finch believes that Minnesota’s offense is stifling them more than their defense.
“Our offense broke down more than anything,” said Finch. “You’ve got to try to score alongside them. And the whole series, we’ve struggled to close games. These three-minute games that we’re playing, we’re losing.
“It starts with kind of a mental breakdown on a left-corner three from Washington when the game is tied, and that gives them just enough breathing room. And then we just didn’t execute very well, didn’t find the open guy very well down the stretch. When we had open looks, they were nowhere near going in. That’s been the story of the series.”
Edwards is averaging 22 points per game. Towns is averaging 15.
“I feel every shot’s good,” Towns said after Game 3.
“I’ve shot a lot of basketballs in my life. I’m the first one in the gym. I definitely am working. I’m shooting. Every time I’m shooting, it feels good. I’m just having these very unfortunate bounces all the time. It’s annoying. The last game, first shot of the game goes in-out, in-out, in-out. This game, my first shot is a free throw, and it goes in-out. I don’t mean to smile, but I’ve just got to laugh at it right now. It’s very disappointing.”
The Timberwolves are losing the battle on both ends of the court. They’re not doing enough to contain Doncic and Irving. However, Edwards and Towns have also not kept up with them offensively.
“We’re not knocking [down] the shot,” said Edwards. “We’ve been knocking the shots down the whole playoffs. Denver series, the Phoenix series, we was making all the shots. So it’s harder to do what you do when we knockin’ ‘em down. But when we not knocking ‘em down, it’s easier to crowd the paint. I was against the rim today, and there was like four people in there. So they make it tough. They did a great job. Shoutout to them.”
Before the Wolves made the Gobert trade, the conventional wisdom was that the league was trending smaller and teams were phasing out size. That seemed to be the case when the Timberwolves fell from a 46-win team in 2021-22 to 42 wins last season. However, Minnesota won 56 games this season and beat the defending champs in the previous round.
“They’ll tell you the numbers, and they don’t give you a great chance,” said Conley. “It’s a unique situation in the sense that we feel like our team is built uniquely in a way that we can find a way to win four in a row. We can find a way to get ourselves a chance to win the series because we do have a lot of depth, a lot of talent, a lot of guys who have experience.”
It’s too early for the Wolves to give up on their two-big experiment, even if the Mavs sweep them. Dallas is a 5-seed, and the West should remain wide open for the foreseeable future. Edwards is gaining valuable playoff experience, and the Timberwolves have signed most of his teammates to long-term contracts. However, other teams will see what Doncic and Irving have done against them and try to replicate it. Eventually, one team will try to establish a dynasty by ending Minnesota’s way of life in the dying days of the Wild West.
