Tim Connelly isn’t clairvoyant, but he knew this season’s stakes in September. “We’ve got to win a playoff series,” he said on media day before the season started. “It’s been way too long since we’ve had success in the postseason.”
The Minnesota Timberwolves haven’t won a playoff series since the 2003-04 season when Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell, and Latrell Sprewell reached the Western Conference Finals. That’s the only season that the Wolves have won a playoff series, and they were one-and-done in the playoffs the seven years before that.
Tom Thibodeau’s TimberBulls broke a 13-year playoff drought but lasted five games in 2017-18, and Jimmy Butler forced his way out the following season. Minnesota made the playoffs in the last two seasons but lost a winnable series to the Memphis Grizzlies two years ago and bowed out to the Denver Nuggets in five games last season.
“I think we’ll see more parity in the Western Conference than we’ve seen in a long time,” Connelly said in September. “Let’s be honest, we have to have success in the postseason for us to be taken seriously.”
Indeed, there is parity in the Western Conference. The Los Angeles Lakers could beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 1-8 matchup, and Phoenix swept the Timberwolves in the regular season. The first game, a 133-115 Suns win, was in November. Therefore, it’s hard to read into that game too much. However, Phoenix beat the Wolves without Karl-Anthony Towns on April 5.
Still, the Suns got out to a 15-0 start in Phoenix on April 5 and led the Wolves 44-22 in Minneapolis on Sunday. Minnesota’s league-leading defense has had trouble limiting Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, and Bradley Beal. Phoenix’s three stars force Towns and Rudy Gobert to guard in space, and Jaden McDaniels hasn’t been able to shut one of them down.
Phoenix may be the worst possible first-round matchup for the Wolves, and Minnesota may have been able to duck them had they won a few more games against inferior opponents this year. For example, they lost twice to the Chicago Bulls and came up short against the San Antonio Spurs and Charlotte Hornets in January.
Good teams lose bad games. But every game counts in a tight Western Conference playoff race where the Wolves were tied with the Denver Nuggets and Oklahoma City entering Sunday. More pertinently, the Washington Wizards got off to a 44-26 start in their April 9 matchup, and the Atlanta Hawks nearly beat Minnesota with their third-stringers on Friday.
The Wolves have gotten off to slow starts recently and overcome them. But the Wizards are the second-worst team in the East and Atlanta is the 10-seed. Phoenix is good enough to run away with a game if they get an early lead. Minnesota hasn’t come within ten points of the Suns in the second half of any game they’ve played this year.
Still, the Wolves want the challenge of facing Phoenix in the first round.
“All three of those games have a different story being told,” said Towns. “There’s no better team to be playing in the first round than a team that we struggled with all year…. If there was ever a time for this team to earn its shot at a parade here or to get to the second round, it’s only right that it would be against the team that we found most difficult for ourselves this year.”
“They won three games in the regular season; regular season over with now,” Edwards said succinctly. “We got the postseason, so we’ll be ready to go.”
It isn’t unheard of for a team to struggle against an opponent in the regular season and beat them in the playoffs. But the Wolves will have to find something on tape that they can exploit or shore up to get a different result against Phoenix in the postseason.
“We gotta move the ball a little bit better, move it away from the crowd,” Chris Finch offered. “We gotta pick up our decision-making, cut down on our turnovers. And defensively, we’ve got to find some solutions with some matchups.”
Minnesota’s veterans believe that the Wolves are their own worst enemy.
“We’re a team that we haven’t looked across the court and thought we’re not better than another team,” said Conley. “In every game, we feel like we can beat that opponent, and this is no different.”
“Our biggest opponent is ourselves,” said Gobert. “We’ve seen that last year, this year. I think we have the tools to give problems and to beat anyone. But we also have some problems that can make us lose to anyone.”
The Suns aren’t Minnesota’s most difficult matchup in the West. The Wolves split the Nuggets series 2-2, but they looked overmatched late in Denver during their 116-107 loss on April 10. The Nuggets are the reigning champs, though, so people likely will continue to believe in the Connelly-Finch Wolves if Denver beats them this year.
It’s a different story with the Suns, though. Phoenix has an expensive, flawed roster, but one that matches up well with Minnesota. The Wolves have bowed out after one round in the past two seasons. Nobody is satisfied with a 56-win regular season. Minnesota needs to win in the playoffs for this year to be a success.
