We Should All Be Hoping For More Minnesota Timberwolves Basketball

If you thought a 3-2 series deficit against the defending NBA champions was going to slow down the Minnesota Timberwolves, guess again.

Minnesota had dropped three games in a row to fall behind in its Western Conference semifinal series with the Nuggets, but you wouldn’t be able to tell based on what transpired inside the Target Center on Thursday night in Minneapolis.

After watching Denver open Game 6 on a 9-2 run, the Timberwolves rattled off 20 unanswered points and were never threatened the rest of the way. They ended up leading by as many as 50 in what turned out to be a 115-70 rout.

Anthony Edwards knew Minnesota Timberwolves were headed to Game 7

Perhaps not everyone was stunned by the result, though. To be fair, after Minnesota dropped Game 5 on the road, Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards did warn the Nuggets’ locker room staffer that the two would meet again.

“I told him, I said I’ll see y’all (expletive) for Game 7,” Edwards said.

And Edwards kept his word.

“This isn’t something that we can just flush,” Denver big man and three-time MVP Nikola Jokic said of the Game 6 blowout. “They beat our (expletive). They were better than us in every segment of the game. We need to accept it and take it. And then we need to try and be better the next time.

“When you lose by 45 points, it’s not something that happens every day.”

Everyone should be rooting for Minnesota on Sunday — unless you’re a Nuggets fan, of course. Many questioned if the Timberwolves could even take care of the Phoenix Suns in a first-round series, and here they are, one win away from their first trip to the Western Conference finals in 20 years.

Few teams have played with the type of swagger that Minnesota has displayed this postseason. It’s not the jovial, upbeat tempo of the Oklahoma City Thunder, nor is it the refined, methodical approach that the Boston Celtics employ.

It’s something different. It’s cutthroat. Maybe even killer.

“I just want to kill everything in front of me, man,” Edwards told ESPN after the Timberwolves went up 3-0 on Phoenix. “That’s the main thing. Pretty much, that’s all it is to it.”

The more basketball Minnesota gets to play, the better. If Edwards is dropping documentary-worthy quotes now, what would we get from him on the league’s biggest stage?

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, though. Before even thinking about the Finals — or conference finals — the Timberwolves need to take care of business on Sunday, only the second Game 7 in franchise history.

But Minnesota certainly has the makings of a team of destiny. They might not end up going all the way this year, but it has at least laid the foundation for good things to come. Real good things.

The Timberwolves have taken the “us against the world” mentality to heart, and at this point, the world might just be the underdog. 

—Nick Galle covers hoops for Field Level Media

Related: 5 Biggest Heroes from Timberwolves’ Game Six Win Over Nuggets