There have been a lot of crazy nights at Target Center over the years, and tonight’s game is right up there as one of the craziest games in a long time.
On Wednesday night, the Minnesota Timberwolves took on the Houston Rockets in a game that will play a dramatic role in determining the seeding for the Western Conference Playoffs. The two teams came into the game separated by just half a game in the standings, and with the Rockets leading the season series between the two teams 1-0, a Houston win would clinch it in their favor.
The game started well for the Wolves. They jumped out to a 12-4 lead and carried that lead through most of the first half, including a nasty transition dunk from Naz Reid.
The Timberwolves led the entire first half, but without Edwards, they were unable to sustain consistent offense in the half-court as the Rockets cut the Wolves’ lead to just one heading into halftime.
Houston took a brief lead early in the third quarter, but Minnesota stormed back to build its lead back up heading down the stretch of the game. Jaden McDaniels was the catalyst late in the fourth quarter as he scored five straight Minnesota points, including a stepback 3-pointer and a strip of Kevin Durant for two points on the other end.
That is when the game went totally off the rails. Following an Alperen Şengün layup and a Timberwolves shot clock violation, Julius Randle ran over Şengün, who was setting a screen, for a foul. With the Rockets in the bonus, this meant two free throws.
Upon review (there were many in this game), the play was curiously upgraded to a flagrant foul as the lead official, Scott Foster, said he “launched” into the opposing player.
The flagrant gave the Rockets two free throws and the ball back, which Houston capitalized on as Şengün slammed the ball home to cut the Minnesota lead down to just five.
The Wolves continued to melt down as they turned the ball over on three straight possessions. The Rockets scored on each of their subsequent possession to give themselves a one-point lead. All in all, it was a 12-0 run over about 3.5 minutes of game time that turned a sure win to the Wolves into a dog fight with less than a minute left.
Randle got into the paint for a layup to give the Wolves a one-point lead back before an away-from-the-play foul on an inbounds play from Rudy Gobert gave Durant a free throw to tie the game. The Wolves forced a turnover and nearly had the game won on the other end, but there was no call on the Randle layup attempts as the game went to overtime.
Things went from bad to worse in overtime for the Wolves in overtime as they quickly went down by five points. The Scott Foster show continued from there. Following an upheld call on a review of a Naz Reid charge, Reid was ejected for seemingly saying, “He’s moving.” After the game, the officials were asked about the ejection via the NBA’s pool report and said, “Reid made a statement that questioned the integrity of the officiating crew.”
With Reid ejected, McDaniels on the bench with an injury he sustained late in the fourth quarter, and Gobert out of the game after fouling out, the snowball kept rolling down the hill, and before the Wolves knew it, they had given up the first 13 points of overtime.
If the game ended right there, it would have been crazy enough, but it didn’t. With fans heading toward the exits, the Wolves didn’t quit on the game. They continued to generate good looks on offense and get stops on defense. Mike Conley knocked one down from deep, Kyle Anderson put in an and-1, and Julius Randle put in a layup to cut the Houston lead down to one possession.
Minnesota didn’t stop there, as Donte DiVincenzo tied the game on the next Wolves possession before Randle put the Wolves back in the lead with another layup. In total, it was a 15-0 Timberwolves run that turned a 15-point deficit into a two-point lead.
According to Sportradar, the 13-point overtime comeback was the largest in NBA history since they started keeping track of play-by-play data during the 1996-97 season. The next highest? The Wolves’ nine-point lead was blown in Denver this past Christmas.
After a pair of missed free throws from Durant (one of which was intentionally missed), the Wolves secured a 110-108 victory in one of the most absurd games at Target Center in a long time.
After the game, Randle made his displeasure with the officiating known, yelling out, “That shit didn’t work, Scott Foster,” as he walked back to the locker room. When asked about the flagrant call earlier in the game, Randle responded, “Don’t get me fined, man.”
“I’ve never seen it before,” Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch said about the flagrant call on Randle. “They’re telling me they had a clear opportunity to avoid the screen. They said he sought him out to run him over. I’ve never seen a flagrant like that. He goes through a screen, they call a foul, fine. That’s clearly a foul. Play on. But a flagrant? I don’t know.”
Throughout a long NBA season, there are bound to be games where the officiating doesn’t go the way a team would hope. While those types of games seem to happen more often with Foster on the floor, how a team responds during those types of games is almost as important as the actual result of the game.
“I’m so proud that we didn’t quit,” Gobert said after the game. “We had a lot of opportunities to get very frustrated tonight. For the most part we were able to overcome that. That’s the blueprint for us. We want to win a championship, so we know there’s going to be adversity.”
DiVincenzo gave insigth into what allowed the Wovles to come back in overtime explaining, “That last timeout we just basically regrouped and looked up and we had a lot of time. I think it was like 3:25. That’s a lot of time in the NBA, but we just got stop after stop and executed on offense. We did a great job of getting the ball into Julius’ hands and trusted his decision making and it worked out for us.”
The hope is that a win like this is a springboard to the Wolves finally becoming the team many fans and media think they can be. Through most of the season, something has just felt off about the Wolves. The consistency of performance has not been there, and each solid stretch of play is followed by abhorrent basketball.
On the flip side, the Wolves have shown this season, and really the past few seasons, that when it seems like they are at their lowest, they can dig out of it with one of their best performances of the season. This game, especially the overtime, was a perfect example.
With just eight games left on the schedule, the question is what Timberwolves team will we see down the stretch of the regular season? The team that gave up a 26-2 run late in the fourth quarter and into overtime, or the one that came storming back just when all seemed lost.
Up Next
The Timberwolves get another couple of days off before taking on the Detroit Pistons on Saturday at 4:30 PM CT. The Pistons will be without Cade Cunningham, who suffered a collapsed lung last week. Fans can watch yet another nationally televised game airing on ABC.
