The Minnesota Timberwolves spent much of the 2023-24 season bending other NBA teams over their knee and putting belt to ass. Sidestepping the whole Draymond Green putting Rudy Gobert in a chokehold incident, the Wolves mostly played and acted more like the Bad Boy Pistons than the typical Timberwolves.
Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels guarded Devin Booker and Kevin Durant during the first-round sweep like they were Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen bullying Toni Kukoč during the 1992 Olympics. Edwards stared down Nikola Jokić as the Timberwolves beat the reigning champs and league MVP in Game 7 in the second round. Gobert came back from the chokehold to win his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award. And Minnesota’s top-raked defense beat the hell out of their opponents on a nightly basis.
However, that swagger has disappeared in the first half of the 2024-25 season. Edwards used to dunk his adversaries into submission and DX chop on their graves. Now, he’s frustrated about teams double-teaming him. McDaniels isn’t telling former All-NBA that they ain’t s— this season.
Julius Randle can’t stop rolling his eyes like he’s on The Office when his teammates make a mistake. The defense took a step back. And according to Shaquille O’Neal, Rudy Gobert is now the worst player in NBA history. Chris Finch has spent most of the season second-guessing his lineup choices when things fall apart in the fourth quarter and sheepishly answering questions about his underperforming team that’s hovered around the Play-In tournament all season.
The Wolves looked destined for an uphill fight to make the playoffs this year after advancing to the Western Conference Finals last season for the first time in 20 years. And the temperature on Finch’s seat was getting warmer with each loss. Still, Minnesota’s season may have turned around with the utterance of one word.
Finch made derogatory comments toward the officials with 5:07 to play in the third quarter, down 72-70 to the Phoenix Suns and already with one technical to his name. They assessed his second technical foul and ejected him from the game. It lit a fire under the Wolves, who went on to smother the Suns the rest of the way, winning 121-113. The derogatory word directed at the refs that may have turned Minnesota’s entire season around?
Finch called them bozos.
Bozo might be the most 55-year-old Midwestern insult someone can utter in public while keeping some level of decorum. It also may have just kicked a bunch of 20-something millionaires in the ass. It wasn’t just calling the officials bozos that got the Timberwolves going. By all accounts, Finch held a vicious film session before the Suns game on Wednesday, and nobody was safe from his wrath. Edwards and Nickeil Alexander-Walker told reporters that Finch woke up that morning and chose violence against his team, which was on the verge of throwing an entire season down the drain.
It wasn’t just Finch’s outburst against the Suns that sparked a turnaround at the midway point of the season. The Wolves had already been playing better ball in January. The Timberwolves are 9-6 in 2025, and their win in Phoenix extended the current win streak to four games. They’re five games over .500 for the first time all season, and the offense is starting to come around after a dreadful start.
Edwards was just named to his third straight All-Star game. He’s averaging 29.9 points per game in January and is dunking on and screaming at everyone in his path. Naz Reid is hitting 56 percent of his threes this month. McDaniels is back to disrespecting star players to their faces. And Rob Dillingham is breathing some life into the Wolves now that he’s back in the rotation.
The Wolves aren’t scott-free just because Finch called the officials bozos. The Timberwolves nearly f—ed around and found out in a sloppy, lifeless eight-point win over a zombie Hawks squad that was missing Trae Young, Jalen Johnson, and Dyson Daniels. Finch let his team know he wasn’t happy with the effort and, in effect, wasn’t happy with how the season was going. They’re 10 days removed from blowing a winnable game against the Grizzlies, the second such loss to Memphis in January.
It’s a dangerous thing, writing about how well the Timberwolves are playing and saying things like they’ve turned things around or the worst is behind them.
It would be the most Timberwolves thing to lose all the goodwill they’ve built up over a four-game win streak with a bad loss to either the Utah Jazz on Thursday as I’m writing this or the six-win Washington Wizards at home on Saturday.
The Timberwolves could easily extend the streak to seven or eight games, build some real momentum for the first time all season, and cement themselves in the top half of the playoff race. Or, they can do what they’ve done all season and lose a few winnable games, squander the momentum, and play like a bunch of bozos.