OKLAHOMA CITY — Can one game ruin an entire season?
For nearly the entirety of the 2024-25 season, the Minnesota Timberwolves were a story of perseverance and resilience. They weathered an earth-shaking trade just before training camp, a glut of losses and injuries and the doubts of most across the league to scratch and claw their way not just to relevance, but to the doorstep of the NBA Finals for the second straight season.
Their first four games against the Oklahoma City Thunder included a 42-point victory in Game 3 and a 2-point loss in Game 4 that was one of the most competitive and entertaining games of this entire postseason. What followed in Wednesday’s Game 5 was a meltdown so complete and so embarrassing that it threatens to overshadow all of this team’s considerable accomplishments in the 96 games that preceded it.
The Timberwolves went into a do-or-die game and were flatlining before the first quarter was halfway over. A team that prides itself on playing its best when its players’ backs are against the wall looked entirely unprepared for the moment. When the final buzzer sounded on a 124-94 series-clinching victory by the Thunder, the Timberwolves trudged off the court with a stain on an otherwise impressive season.
The Wolves scored just 9 points in the first quarter, missing 17 of their 20 shots and turning it over four times to fall behind by 17 points. They trailed by 65-32 at halftime, a deficit bigger than their total points scored. They had 14 turnovers in the first two quarters and only 12 field goals.
“Once that buzzer sounds and you’re just able to feel everything, it hurts,” forward Julius Randle said. “It hurts. So, really, that’s where I’m at right now. It’s almost like a grieving stage of the season and it hurts, really. But we’ll be back.”
There is a phrase that lives in infamy in Minnesota sports lore: “41-donut.” It refers to the 2001 NFC Championship Game, a 41-0 loss by the Vikings to the New York Giants. In a state that has seen as much disappointment from its men’s sports teams as any other, that game stands above the rest for the level of nausea induced.
These Thunder, who won 68 games in the regular season and had the largest point differential in league history, are much better than those Giants were, perhaps the only thing saving the Wolves’ performance from joining that one at the top. They trailed by as many as 39 points in the game.
Randle might have been the best story of the first two rounds of the playoffs, putting aside a history of playoff duds with an incredible run through the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round and the Golden State Warriors in the second round, averaging 23.9 points, 5.9 rebounds and 5.9 assists and seemingly setting himself up for a big contract extension in the offseason. But after openly admitting to being a “spectator” in Games 2 and 4 of the conference finals, Randle was completely out of sorts in the first half Wednesday.
In his first 12 minutes on the floor, when the game was really decided, Randle had 3 points and three turnovers. The Wolves trailed 30-11 at that point. He got going in the second half and finished with a strong line of 24 points and five rebounds, but the game was long over by the time his shots started falling. He has a player option for $31 million next season, and both sides were expected to explore a longer-term deal. But he scored 6 points in Game 2, 5 points in Game 4 and had more turnovers (four) than made shots (three) in the first half Wednesday.
“Super disappointing,” Randle said. “But just the series in general, I’m disappointed. I feel like we’re a better team than what we showed. So, a lot of motivation going into the summer, for sure.”
Naz Reid also has a player option on his contract for next season and figured to be in line for a considerable raise, either in Minnesota or elsewhere. He had 2 points and three turnovers in his first eight minutes, dribbling one ball off his foot on a breakaway opportunity in the first half. He finished with 11 points, five turnovers and four fouls.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker is the third player the Wolves will have to make a decision on this summer. His contract expires, so he will be a free agent, but he has been an essential part of their rise in the Western Conference. He has been one of the best bargains in the league, making just $4.3 million this season and is in line for a significant raise. He was terrific in the Game 4 loss to the Thunder, scoring 23 points to account for a no-show from Randle and a quiet night from Anthony Edwards. But in the final game of the season, NAW was 0 for 8 with two turnovers and was part of a defense that was absolutely shredded by the hungrier Thunder.
Rudy Gobert’s offensive struggles were so significant that he couldn’t play much in this series. He had 2 points and one shot in 19 minutes. His teammates did not trust him to pass him the ball because he couldn’t catch it cleanly, leaving five Thunder defenders to guard four Wolves.
“The way they were matching up and stuff like that, we’ve got to do a better job of maximizing him as an offensive player, and the little ways that we can and have done in the past this year was not a good job by us in that capacity,” Finch said.
Finch is, by any measure, the most successful coach in Timberwolves history. He has brought a level of competitiveness to this team that has never been seen before, and he became the franchise leader in playoff victories earlier this offseason. His players rave about his ability to hold them accountable and the trust he places in them even in the most difficult times. But when a team fails this spectacularly in such an important moment, he has to take some of the blame.
The Thunder are a monster of a team. They were the heavy favorites entering this series for a reason. But Finch was unable to come up with any schematic answers for OKC’s suffocating defense or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s ruthlessness on offense. While Mark Daigneault found ways to attack Minnesota’s defense and get SGA and Jalen Williams easy looks, everything was just so hard for the Timberwolves.
“We were beat by the better team. So you fight, you fight, you fight, but they play better, they’re better,” Finch said. “So at that point in time, I’m not one of these guys that takes losses into the summer with me. We’ll learn and we’ll regroup, but the better team won this series, and I’m proud of our guys and our organization for getting here.”
Edwards was surrounded by defenders at all times, and yet the Wolves couldn’t make the Thunder pay for selling out so completely to stop him. As the series went along, he seemed to wear down a bit, tiring of getting hit and bumped and beaten to his spots. It was similar to last season against the Dallas Mavericks, when he said that he had to get in better shape to endure a long playoff run.
Edwards had 19 points on 7-of-18 shooting. He missed six of his seven 3s, most of which were heavily contested.
“He’s got to find some easier buckets. I got to help him do that,” Finch said. “I think we were never able to establish something consistent with him and that’s on us as much as anybody.”
After the game, Edwards struck a similarly optimistic tone as he did after they were eliminated by the Mavericks. As someone who lost his mother and grandmother to cancer when he was 14 years old, he has always said that he does not get hurt by what happens on a basketball court. He gets emboldened by what is to come.
“I don’t know why people would think it would hurt. It’s exciting for me,” Edwards said. “I’m 23. I get to do it a whole bunch of times. I’m hurt more so for Mike (Conley). I came up short for Mike. We tried last year, we couldn’t get it. We tried again this year. We’ll try again next year. But hurt is a terrible word to use. I’m good.”
So can one game ruin an entire season? Probably not.
In the misery that enveloped the Wolves postgame locker room, they did find moments to look at the bigger picture. This team faced an uphill climb from the start of the season. Nothing came easy, and yet the Wolves never gave in and bulldozed their way to the playoffs for the fourth straight season, an impressive feat given that they missed the postseason 16 times in 17 years before Finch was hired as coach. They went 20 years between conference finals appearances before last year’s run, and it took them exactly one calendar year to get back there again.
“It was definitely a challenging season in a lot of ways,” Finch said. “They stuck with it. They stuck with each other. They stuck with me. It wasn’t always pretty, but we played our best basketball when it mattered, which was down the stretch.”
This loss does sting. It was embarrassing, for the players, the coaches and the fans. It will linger far longer than most single losses do. And it should. The Wolves have to use this ignominy to fuel them.
President of basketball operations Tim Connelly, Finch and Edwards have set a new standard in Minnesota. With that comes real expectations, and that is why a loss like this hurts so much. No one cared all that much when the Wolves lost a game in April to fall to 31-51 in 2017. These losses matter. These losses are seen.
Leave it to Conley to sum it up best.
“It’s disappointing for us, disappointing for our fans, disappointing for everyone in the moment,” he said. “But man, we work, we do the right things, we come in early, leave late. We do everything we can to try to prepare ourselves for this long season and the ups and downs of it. To be back in this situation says a lot about our team, our coaches, our players’ resiliency throughout the season.
“It’s something we’ve gotta keep building on, keep learning from. Unfortunately, the best lesson is going through it with your own experiences. These guys are feeling it. Obviously, I’ve felt this situation. Hopefully, we can just learn and get better for it.”
(Top photo of Anthony Edwards: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
