Timberwolves 126, 76ers 112: NAW World Order

A masterpiece from a pair of guards off the bench drove the Wolves in a decisive win over a shorthanded Philly squad.

You can exhale. The Minnesota Timberwolves have beaten a team that they definitely should have by double digits.

Did they perhaps wait a little too long to close the door? Sure. Did it look like it was going in the wrong direction at the end of the third quarter until Mike Conley launched a half court prayer that went down at the buzzer? It absolutely did.

The Philadelphia 76ers were scheduled for a loss. The injury report before the game was more of a laundry list.

Yet it was another slow start out of the gate for the Wolves, letting Philly off the hook with a tough start from the field and giving up cheap points in transition. The Minnesota starters shot just 33 percent from the field in the first eight minutes of the game (22 percent from three), turned the ball over five times in that short stretch, trailed for much of the period, and still closed out the first quarter up 24-22.

A snowstorm inbound to the Twin Cities and a sleepy Sixer team in the house, Target Center wasn’t its most lively version of itself. If the Wolves wanted to jump on the game early, they were going to have to create their own energy.

“We knew they were gonna play hard,” Chris Finch said afterwards. “Oubre always gives us trouble. Turnovers were the name of the game for us…we can’t go back to that type of basketball.”

Back and forth until the final quarter, the Wolves started the fourth on fire, getting some of their tough early-game shot selection off of the scoresheet, limited transition, and outpaced Philadelphia 17-8 to start the quarter. Maybe the Wolves didn’t create the energy early, but Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Donte DiVincenzo certainly brought it down the stretch.

With seven minutes left in a 12-point game, DiVincenzo raced to the floor to save a ball from going out of bounds and generated a transition basket, ironically for Alexander-Walker. At that point, it felt like the finishing blow; the mark that the Wolves were done playing with their food and finally ready to close out an inferior team.

No clutch time needed either, imagine that!

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Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images

Guard Play Pulls Through

Chris Finch expecting some rust from Donte DiVincenzo after missing nearly two months with a turf toe injury. It would be unfair to assume anything else.

Instead, expectations weren’t met, but in much more positive light.

“He’s in midseason form,” he said. “You wouldn’t think he had six weeks off.”

The former Knick finished with 12 points, and had a dueling plus-12, good for one of the best marks on the team.

“His shot is going in because we’re finding him for wide open ones,” Finch added. “His activity has been great.”

In a similar lane to DiVincenzo but nearly triple the plus/minus, Nickeil Alexander-Walker singlehandedly kickstarted the Wolves’ desire to pull away later in the game, and finished with an eye-popping plus-32, his synergy with DDV beaming through to pull the Wolves across the finish line. Both on the defensive end in getting the primary assignment of a white-hot Quentin Grimes (30 points), and on the offensive end in finding driving lanes.

“Nickeil was amazing tonight…both ends of the floor,” Finch said. “He came in and set the tone defensively.”

Whether leading a 9-4 run out of halftime, playing a team-high 8:46 in the fourth quarter and scoring 13 points in the period alone, it’s not an unfair statement to say that he was the reason the Wolves won.

In many of the contests where he doesn’t seem to get things working, NAW can be limited by whether his shot is falling or not, impacting his defense in a linear way on the other end. Wednesday, he was able to boost his offense in a multitude of ways. Philadelphia was closing out on the perimeter decisively, and he was making them pay.

Finishing 8-11 from the field for the game, Alexander-Walker was a perfect 5-5 from inside the perimeter.

“It all comes from being shot ready,” Finch said. “He’s always a good driver when he can attack the closeout…when he can see the next level of defense to make the right play.”

Whatever decision the Wolves land on this offseason between Alexander-Walker and Julius Randle, while Randle was also excellent, these are the games, near flawless two-way masterpieces, that often get buried in the fold of an 82-game season, but carry all as much of the importance.

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Photo by David Berding/Getty Images

Emptying The Notebook

• Not a great Anthony Edwards game. At all. The only Wolves starter that finished in the minus (-3), it was a good reflection of his continuation in letting the 76ers off the hook. Philly, shorthanded, clearly had the objective of getting up and down the floor and trying for as many transition points as possible. Similar to the game against Chicago earlier on in the season, Edwards took too many ill-advised three pointers, resulting in long rebounds and transition runouts. Hopefully the development can happen this season, but his transition decision making has to improve. It’s an easy way to avoid bad losses against bad teams; a chronic issue that he shares with everyone else.
• “How will the Wolves guard Quentin Grimes?” was a common halftime question. Fresh off of a 44-point game this weekend, Grimes continued his hot shooting with a 20-point, 8-12 from the field first half. Nickeil Alexander-Walker played a big part in that. He went on to have a 10-point second half, with a lot of his opportunities smothered.
• Julius Randle continues to really impress me. He’s just making the right play. When the Wolves needed some offensive juice early on, he gave it to them with seven first quarter points and a couple and-1s, and didn’t force the issue. He had no problem making the extra pass (five assists). The floor of the Wolves is drastically higher with this version of him playing the four. A quiet 16 points on nine shots. Really, really good stuff.

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Up Next

The Wolves hit the road for another winnable game in a back-to-back with the Charlotte Hornets. Losers of seven straight, Charlotte is clearly playing for lottery balls at this point and would welcome the opportunity to lose their eighth in a row.

Over this losing streak, they’ve dropped games to both the Washington Wizards, and the injured Dallas Mavericks.

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Highlights