At the end of the regular season, the Minnesota Timberwolves fell out of the 1 seed, landing with what many thought would be their worst possible first-round matchup against the Phoenix Suns. Phoenix had swept the Wolves 3-0 in their regular season games. However, the Wolves flipped the script in the playoffs and did the unexpected. They swept a team that seemed to have the recipe to stop them, making it look easy in three out of the four wins.
Minnesota’s sweep of the Suns is significant for multiple reasons. First, it means that the Wolves have made it out of the first round for only the second time in franchise history and the first time in 20 years. The only other Timberwolves team to make it out of the first round was the 2003-04 team with Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell, and Latrell Sprewell.
The sweep is also historically significant because it is the first time in Minnesota sports history that a professional team has swept a best-of-7 series. That includes the Twins, the Wild, and the two former teams, the North Stars and the Minneapolis Lakers.
Only the Finals were a 7-game series during George Mikan’s dynasty with the Lakers. While they swept several 3-game series, they never won four straight. Similarly, the Minnesota Lynx had several sweeps in the playoffs during their dynasty from 2011 to 2017, in which they won the finals four times. The 2013 Lynx, featuring Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Lindsay Whalen, and Rebekkah Brunson, won the WNBA championship without losing a single game in the playoffs, which amounted to 7 straight wins against 3 different teams. However, because the championship round is only a best-of-5 series, the Lynx technically don’t fit the criteria for this somewhat niche, albeit important, piece of Minnesota sports history.
As incredible as it is for the Wolves to put that piece of history into their record books, their goal in these playoffs was not to sweep the Suns in the first round. Instead, it’s to win a championship. As Chris Finch noted in his press conference after Game 3, he wasn’t here for the first 26 years of the franchise’s history. The future is more important to him and the team than a past they had no part in creating.
Keeping that energy, there are several ways that Minnesota’s first-round sweep benefits the team as they head into the second round against the Denver Nuggets. Most directly, the Wolves will have a slight rest advantage going into their second-round series. While the Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Lakers in five games, they lost one game to them.
While one game may not seem like a huge difference in terms of rest, the playoffs are partially a war of attrition. They are much more physical than the regular season, and players play harder for more minutes because every game is important. That can cause more wear and tear on players, especially those with a history of nagging injuries in places that are tough to rehab, like knees, calves, and feet. Teams that avoid playing extra games create one less opportunity for an injury to occur or get worse and more time to rest.
The extra rest will be helpful in this particular series against the Nuggets because Finch went down with a knee injury after Devin Booker pushed (or bumped?) Mike Conley into the sidelines and hit Finch’s knee. Some extra rest may allow him to recover enough to stand on the sidelines and coach the team.
Wolves fans know how important Finch has been in turning around the franchise in the past 4 years, and he deservedly got 3rd place in Coach of the Year voting this season. His halftime adjustments this season have been spectacular. The Timberwolves had the highest Net Rating of any team in the 3rd quarter during the regular season at 13.1, 2.1 points higher than the second-place Oklahoma City Thunder. The Wolves outscored the Suns in every 3rd quarter of the first round, were a +37, and started to pull away from the Suns in the 3rd quarter in 3 out of the 4 games.
Additionally, Jamal Murray strained his left calf in Game 4 of Denver’s first-round series and had to play on the injury in Game 5. If he hadn’t, the Nuggets might not have won the game. Murray hit his second game-winner of the first round to end the series. Still, if Denver had won Game 4, Murray would have had a few extra days of rest to let his calf recover before starting Round 2.
I don’t wish injury on anyone in the NBA, even my least-favorite players like Jimmy Butler and Booker, whom I’m too petty to forgive for their crimes against Wolves fans. Hopefully, Murray will be back to full strength, so the Wolves can beat the Nuggets at full strength. Still, Murray’s injury serves as an example of how even one extra game can disadvantage a team.
Finally, Minnesota’s sweep of the Suns should build confidence in the locker room going into the second round. Some players, like Anthony Edwards, never lose confidence and don’t need much positive reinforcement to believe they can win a championship. But others feed off of it and play with more energy and precision when they feel confident.
Finch noted in the earlier interview that he didn’t think many players in Minnesota’s locker room knew they were Vegas underdogs in the series or that many national analysts picked against them. Still, I’m sure they were aware that they lost to the Suns three times during the regular season.
It has to feel great for them to sweep a series against the team that played them better than anyone else in the regular season and blow them out three times. They solved all the problems the Suns presented them during the regular season and turned Phoenix’s strengths into weaknesses. That has to give Minnesota confidence to beat Denver and make a Finals run.
The Timberwolves are just getting started in the playoffs, and a sweep of the Suns in the first round was the best way to do it. The Wolves will again enter the second round against the defending champions as an underdog. However, they should be confident they can beat any team in the NBA with a little extra time to draw up a game plan to try to stop Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets.
