LOS ANGELES (AP) — Playoff success was a largely foreign concept to the Minnesota Timberwolves during their first 34 years of existence. The 2003-04 team led by Kevin Garnett won two postseason rounds, but those were the only two series victories in team history until last spring.
After Minnesota knocked off LeBron James and Luka Doncic on Wednesday night to reach the second round in consecutive seasons for the first time in franchise history, it’s safe to say this current pack of Wolves has a bit more playoff tenacity than the teams that came before them.
Now back in the Western Conference semifinals, Minnesota is anticipating an even higher climb.
“Our guys fought,” coach Chris Finch said after their 103-96 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers. “They fought through it. I’m happy that they are able to achieve something that no other team has been able to do in the history of the franchise, which is go back to the second round two years in a row. Now there’s a lot bigger goals out there, but for the moment we’ll be pretty happy about that.”
The Timberwolves had an outstanding five-game series against the Lakers, demonstrating the team poise necessary to handle the inevitable adversity of a playoff run along with the cool implementation of tactics to slow down elite players — in this case, Doncic and James. After routing the Lakers in Game 1, Minnesota responded to a loss in Game 2 by hanging on for a pair of difficult fourth-quarter victories at home.
The clincher was a strange game, with the Lakers going fully to a small-ball lineup in an attempt to get scoring against the Wolves’ aggressive team defense. That cleared the paint for center Rudy Gobert, who responded with playoff career highs of 27 points and 24 rebounds to keep Minnesota ahead even while his teammates missed 40 of their 47 3-point attempts.
“When (Gobert) does what he does tonight, you see how good we can be as a team,” Julius Randle said.
The Wolves had to survive a nightmare shooting game from leading scorer Anthony Edwards, who missed all 11 of his 3-point attempts and finished 5 for 19 overall. They made up for it with team defense and balanced scoring, getting at least eight points from seven players in Finch’s eight-man rotation.
The relative ugliness of the victory didn’t bother the Wolves, who took satisfaction from answering every challenge presented by the star-studded Lakers. After last season’s second-round series victory over defending champion Denver and their Western Conference finals loss to Doncic’s Dallas Mavericks, the Wolves know they’ll have to find previously unimagined ways to win in the postseason, and they’re growing comfortable with it.
“I think what I’m super happy (about) with this team right now is we’re not satisfied,” Finch said. “We’ve got a long way to go. We’ll regroup, but we are certainly going to celebrate this because this team took a lot of (criticism) throughout the season. That was set against the backdrop of a really good run last year. But every team is different, every team has to come together, every team has to go through pain and every team has to figure it out. This team figured it out.”
Minnesota could even be the home team in the second round if Golden State takes advantage of its two additional chances to finish off second-seeded Houston after losing Game 5 on Wednesday night. Facing Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler in the postseason might be even more daunting than this showdown with Doncic and James, but the Wolves are ready to keep rolling.
“It’s just a start, but I feel good about it as well,” Randle said. “Especially the way we won, and how we were doubted. It just shows we’ve got a lot of character in the locker room.”
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