Following the Minnesota Timberwolves’ 108-105 loss to the Dallas Mavericks in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, Anthony Edwards provided a frank evaluation of the team.
Edwards clarified, “You could see that we were lagging behind everyone, especially myself.” “I believe we scored when Kyrie got a transition layup; he simply outran me.” Man, I was simply tired. But everything will be OK.
Edwards concluded his remark with confidence, as always. After their 20-point comeback victory over the Denver Nuggets in Game 7 of the second round, the Timberwolves had just two days off. Following a victory in Game 7 of the conference finals over a team that did not participate in Game 7, teams have a record of 0-14 in Game 1 since 2011. It was therefore not unexpected that Minnesota played so slowly in Game 1.
Nevertheless, some commentators took offence to Edwards’ comments following Game 1 versus Dallas. As the primary defender, he stopped Kyrie Irving for 33.9 partial possessions, allowing him to shoot 4 of 7 from the field and record a game-high eight points. The frontcourt duo of Irving and Luka Dončić is a different animal, even though Edwards, Jaden McDaniels, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker managed to guard Jamal Murray in the second round.
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The Wolves (-170) were the series’ early favourites to defeat Dallas and had the second-best odds to win the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy in 2024 according to Las Vegas. Many predicted that the Wolves would defeat the Mavs following Minnesota’s defensive avalanche against the reigning champs. But Dallas’s offensive and defensive revolution turned the season around for Minnesota in just five games.
Postseason play is where teams always discover new things. Championship-caliber teams are bred by playoff disappointment and tragedy. All of the Wolves’ players expressed disappointment in their parting interviews, despite the fact that they may not have been devastated when their season ended last week. They were just seven games from winning the franchise’s first championship.
But the Wolves’ loss taught them an important—though sometimes ignored—lesson.
The Timberwolves finally overcame their four-year playoff skid in 2022. They advanced to the first round and, following a victory against the Los Angeles Clippers in the Play-In Tournament, they fell to the Memphis Grizzlies in six games. In his fifth season as an NBA coach, Chris Finch and his squad secured a postseason trip.
It was a season of transitions. The next summer, after Tim Connelly was appointed President of Basketball Operations by the Wolves, he moved to bring in veteran players Rudy Gobert and Kyle Anderson. Connelly and his team acquired Mike Conley at the trade deadline a few months later.
Before the 2023–24 season, the Wolves unexpectedly rose to the position of 12th youngest team. Although the veterans that Minnesota brought in had limited deep postseason success, their core was still relatively young. This season marks Conley and Anderson’s second trip to the Western Conference Finals. However, Gobert had never advanced past the second round, and none of the other players in Finch’s playoff lineup had ever advanced past the opening round.
Against Dallas, Minnesota’s deficiency in players with over 90 games of experience in a single season was evident.
In his farewell interview, Anderson said to the media, “Maybe we kinda hit a wall.” We simply didn’t seem to have the same energy as we did during the Denver and Phoenix series. Sometimes, you’re not even aware of it. However, this morning my father brought it up to me, saying, “It looks like you guys just hit a wall.”
You make an effort to avoid that. You attempt to believe that you are energised and prepared to play, but as a team, we lacked the same spark in the Dallas series that we did in Denver, Phoenix, and throughout the entire season.
During the regular season, Minnesota’s defence was its strongest suit. It held its opponents to fewer than 100 points 23 times and had an NBA-low defensive rating of 108.4. Elston Turner, the defensive coordinator for the Wolves, was able to utilise physically intimidating defenders such as Gobert, McDaniels, Edwards, Anderson, and Alexander-Walker. But Minnesota’s strength, aggression, and desire to win brought the team’s defence back to life.
Many times throughout the first and second rounds of the playoffs, Minnesota’s defence was evident as the Nuggets or Phoenix Suns began to tyre. They constantly gave off the impression that they were the side that wanted to win the series more, whether it was through emotional outbursts from Devin Booker or Murray turtling the ball at the halfcourt line because the Wolves were doubling him.
However, Dallas substantially changed the Wolves’ situation.
“I am aware that several guys were worn out today. In his farewell interview, Reid informed reporters, “It’s been a long season.” “You’ve played more than 100 games by the time you reach this stage. being in good physical form. Possessing the mental toughness to overcome any obstacle. We just didn’t really go past the point where we were all engaged and prepared to move forward in terms of shape. I believe that everyone had essentially the same mentality. Everyone was pretty exhausted, as I mentioned. It was evident and could be seen.”
The defence of Minnesota feeds the offence. The Wolves are unlikely to put together significant offensive possessions when they aren’t getting stops. With their ability to read the court and score in isolation, Dončić and Irving thoroughly embarrassed the Wolves. For significant portions of the series, Minnesota was unable to contain them, demonstrating that defence is insufficient to win titles.
The Wolves’ offence wavered due to the intensity they had to project on defence.
“Their physicality really bothered us,” Finch remarked in response to a reporter’s question regarding Minnesota’s offensive deficit following Game 6. “We tried everything, but their physicality busted us out of everything.”
On defence, the Mavericks were the team with greater aggression. They engaged in fierce screen battles, physically confronted Edwards on his downhill attack, and prevented the Wolves from scoring by using superior shot blocking along the rim. But Minnesota moved the ball slowly, and it seldom penalised Dallas for taking its time rotating. Instead of driving deep into the game, the Wolves far too frequently settled for pull-up threes and contested mid-range tries.
After three games, Minnesota was very much in the running to defeat Dallas. However, the Wolves horribly underperformed on both ends of the court in Game 5, when their season was on the line. This put an unfortunate end to the most successful season in 20 years.
Ant knows what has to be altered. The team’s immediate goals for the upcoming season are to make it back to the Western Conference Finals and advance to the Finals. The year 2024 served as another foundational campaign. The Wolves now have to get ready for a lengthier season that starts in just four short months.
“We didn’t know we were going to go this far, but we trained this year as if we were going to play 82 games and maybe one round of the playoffs,” Edwards stated. “I know nobody, not even myself, trained like that this summer; we certainly didn’t. We need to train as though we already know what we are going to do because we know what kind of team we have and what we are capable of. This summer will be extremely important for all of us.
