They had to survive a couple scares in Game 2, but the Minnesota Timberwolves evened their second-round playoff series 1-1 against the Golden State Warriors on Thursday.
Minnesota went wire-to-wire in a 117-93 win over a Warriors team still reeling from losing superstar Stephen Curry for at least a week. However, the Timberwolves seemed poised to lose their own leading scorer when Anthony Edwards went down with an ankle injury.
So there were several sighs of relief when Edwards returned after halftime, with no apparent issue. He finished the game with 20 points on 6-of-13 shooting, 9 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals. It was Julius Randle who led the way for the Timberwolves throughout the night, with 24 points, 11 assists and 7 rebounds.
Meanwhile, without Curry, Jonathan Kuminga came off the bench and led the Warriors in scoring with 18 points.
Game 3 is scheduled for Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
Anthony Edwards is fine, and so are the Timberwolves. (Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)
(David Berding via Getty Images)
Anthony Edwards comes back from ankle sprain
Edwards’ injury occurred in the second quarter, when Edwards went down to the floor clutching his left ankle. Replays showed the foot of Warriors big man Trayce Jackson-Davis landed on Edwards’ ankle, leaving the 23-year-old sitting on the floor holding his lower leg as play went on.
Edwards was later helped to the locker room, with athletic trainers preventing him from putting any weight on the ankle. The Timberwolves later announced he was questionable to return with a left ankle sprain.
However, over the course of halftime, Edwards went from barely being able to walk on a sprained ankle to running onto the court with the rest of the team. He was healthy enough to start the third quarter, despite the team up big with a 56-39 lead.
Again, videos immediately above and below were taken less than a half-hour apart.
Edwards previously tweaked that ankle in Game 1 on Tuesday, amid a performance that was poor enough that Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch called out Edwards after the game.
What are Warriors trying without Curry? Everything, apparently
The Warriors having to survive any amount of time longer than a single game without Curry is not an enviable position. The team’s entire offense revolves around not just what the greatest shooter in NBA history does with the ball, but what defenses have to do when he doesn’t have the ball.
With no Curry, the calculus of how you guard every player on the Warriors gets turned into basic arithmetic. So naturally, Kerr’s plan for Game 2 was to throw everything against the wall and see what stuck.
And that’s how you become the first team in NBA playoffs history to use 14 different players in the first half.
Draymond Green nearing suspension
The Warriors are already down one All-Star. They don’t need to lose another, even for a single game.
Draymond Green is now perilously close to making that happen. The veteran big man and raconteur picked up his fifth technical foul of the playoffs in the second quarter, leaving him two techs from an automatic one-game suspension.
The foul occurred Thursday night when T-wolves big man Naz Reid fouled him in the second quarter. Green responded to the contact from Reid by jumping and flailing his arms out, catching his opponent in the back of the head and sending him to the floor.
The officials reviewed the play and deemed it a common foul on Reid and a technical foul on Green.
Not only is Green two technical fouls from a suspension, he’s also two flagrant fouls from having to miss a game.
Timberwolves avoid becoming latest team to blow 20-point lead
When Buddy Hield hit the 3-pointer to cut the Timberwolves’ lead to seven points midway through the third quarter, we would not have blamed you for thinking another 20-point comeback was underway, even with Curry in street clothes.
This postseason has seen an NBA playoff-record five comeback wins of at least 20 points, the most recent being the New York Knicks’ unraveling of the Boston Celtics in Game 2 on Wednesday in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Fortunately for a briefly nervous Target Center crowd, the Timberwolves responded with an 11-0 run to put the game out of reach again.
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