The fate of the Minnesota Timberwolves was out of Anthony Edwards’s hands. The Denver Nuggets made sure of it, pressuring Minnesota’s ascendant star with so many defenders that it was impossible for him to take over Game 7 in the way he would have liked. Those sorts of traps are a test—of a team’s game-planning, of its coordination, of its sense of purpose. And in those clarifying moments, the ball found its way, time and again, to one of the Wolves’ three bigs.
The Ringer’s NBA Odds Machine
Check out our daily predictions hub for the 2023-24 championship, the no. 1 overall pick, and more
The story of Game 7—and of Minnesota’s earth-shaking comeback win—is the story of Karl-Anthony Towns, Rudy Gobert, and Naz Reid. It’s those three centers who set the Wolves apart, and it’s those three centers who made the most critical plays in the most important game in Timberwolves history. Together, they ground the gears of a defending champion, punching Minnesota’s ticket to the conference finals for the first time in 20 years. “I think they’re built to beat us,” Jokic said after the game. “Just look at their roster.” And built, more specifically, to beat him.
Towns never gave Jokic a moment’s reprieve on Sunday, forcing him to fight for every step while Gobert loomed in help. And when all those bumps and holds finally got Towns into foul trouble in the fourth quarter, Reid tagged in to body up the three-time MVP with even fresher legs—blocking his shot twice in crunch time alone. There was something resonant in Jokic trying, desperately, to get his shot up inside, only to see it devoured by a pack of Wolves:
To watch Jokic down the stretch was to see the best player in the world without answers, utterly exhausted from fending off big, physical opponents while dealing with the mental overhead of Minnesota’s swarming help. Over the course of this series, Jokic had his shot blocked 11 times by various Timberwolves—the most, by far, in any series he’s played to date. Even when Jokic played well, he was off his usual rhythm; the 34 points, 19 rebounds, and seven assists he put up in Game 7 are impressive by any standard, but by game’s end he couldn’t muster the certainty or force needed to overcome a front line like Minnesota’s. None of the Nuggets could.
This was the Timberwolves’ design from the start of last season and the vision that Tim Connelly—who originally drafted Jokic in Denver—brought to life. No team can match Minnesota’s collective size. The only real means of scoring on the Wolves is to go well out of your way—to take circuitous routes around all the long arms and ferocious contests in the hope that there might be some sliver of daylight on the other side. Often, there’s not. But Denver painstakingly built a 20-point lead on Sunday, only to give it back as all that roundabout execution took its toll. Towns and Gobert, the reigning, if maligned, Defensive Player of the Year, made the Nuggets work for everything they got.
The value in a player like Gobert doesn’t come through in how he guards Jokic one-on-one, but in how he makes Jokic second-guess himself even when he isn’t guarding him. Gobert’s presence simply demands to be accounted for; if an opponent goes up too slowly or softly or indecisively, their attempts are likely to suffer the same fate as this double-clutch try from Jamal Murray:
Denver converted just 48 percent of its shots around the rim in what would become the final game of its season. That’s Gobert—often behind Towns or Reid, putting an added layer of resistance between the Nuggets and the easy buckets they were desperate to create. In these playoffs, the Wolves have run through a premier jump-shooting team that was supposed to give them trouble and a title-winning juggernaut that was supposed to get the better of them. The Wolves outscored the Suns and the Nuggets by an incredible 19 points per 100 possessions with Gobert on the floor and were outscored by 10, in turn, when he sat. A 7-footer makes for a convenient lightning rod, it turns out, but a better defensive anchor.
The coverage overall was breathtaking—perfectly calibrated by Gobert and his fellow bigs at every step, allowing Edwards and Jaden McDaniels to hound the ball with relentless abandon. All of which explains how a Wolves team that could at times barely scrounge up points was able to pull off the biggest comeback in Game 7 history. Scoring can be notoriously hard to come by in these winner-take-all affairs, but in a bit of a plot twist, Minnesota found a kind of ragged stability through Towns. The career Timberwolf has struggled in playoffs past to find his place in things, floating through possessions when he needed to be assertive and hard-charging into mistakes when he needed to be patient. Yet with Edwards contained in the first half, Minnesota turned to Towns in the post, and he came up with some crucial, life-giving offense en route to 23 points and 12 rebounds on the night.
“He made all the right plays tonight,” Edwards said. “He only took 14 shots. He’s always super efficient from the field, and he carried us tonight. Every time we needed a bucket, he was there for us.”
You could say the same for all three bigs. When the Wolves went scoreless for over five minutes bridging the first and second quarters, they found a lifeline by dumping the ball to Gobert inside against mismatches—and relying on him in a way that the Jazz never did. He drew enough fouls to keep the Wolves alive. He also hit an honest-to-goodness fadeaway jumper in the heat of the fourth, taking a two-point lead to four:
“I think when Rudy hit the turnaround, I was like, ‘Yeah, we probably got ’em,’” Edwards said. “I know that’ll kill you. I know that’ll kill everything.”
Yet at the game’s most critical juncture, late in the fourth, it was the Wolves’ third big who upped the ante: first with a post score, then a drawn foul on the offensive glass, followed by a stunning putback dunk. Reid and Gobert led the Wolves in fourth-quarter scoring, with eight points apiece. Minnesota mashed Denver on the glass in the second half to work its way back into the game, which added to the war of attrition and made it all too fitting for Towns to end the game with a spectacular second chance:
This is what it takes to win a heavyweight series: supreme effort, steely resolve, calculated execution, and a few breaks that—like the soft arc of a Gobert fadeaway—seem to defy explanation. Denver was up 20 at home and lost. Minnesota shot 39 percent from the field and won, with its best player scoring just 16 points. That’s the magic of a Game 7. It doesn’t matter who does what, as long as it gets done. “Everybody has the trust of the next person,” Reid said in the visitor’s locker room after the win. “The support system between each guy is crazy—I’ve never seen it on a team like that before.”
This is a year of firsts for the Timberwolves, a long-suffering franchise that now has so much to celebrate. An unprecedented regular season. Their first-ever sweep in a seven-game series. A statement series against the defending champs. And now, in two days’ time: a chance at another breakthrough, and to see what all these historic firsts are worth.
