DALLAS – Karl-Anthony Towns’ play, his future with the Minnesota Timberwolves franchise and his responsibility on this team that goes from the toast of the NBA to the toast of the Western Conference Finals have been scrutinized in recent days.
The silly fouls, the kicks, the horrible percentages were in the foreground. The player he has been for nine years has suddenly been dissected by those who have always been tormented by his talent, but frustrated by the lack of results his talent seems to demand.
More than anyone on that list, even more than perennial whip Rudy Gobert, Towns needed this. Not just to perform well, but to make an impact on winning. Value in a scan would only go so far.
And then, in a 15-minute span where he was one foul away from disqualification, in a game where his team was one loss away from elimination, he dug deep and went to a place, a zip code that he had never visited since he left. became professional.
Anthony Edwards said it simply: “He was the reason we won tonight.”
Towns finally found the range at a time when the Timberwolves desperately needed it, scoring 25 with five rebounds as Minnesota got on the board in this conference final with a 105-100 victory, sending the series back to Minneapolis for Game 5 on the night of Thursday.
All three fourth-quarter triples came within a three-minute span — the first giving the Timberwolves a 92-90 lead and the final one giving his team some breathing room with 2:54 left and a 92-90 lead. six points.
“He was super confident,” Edwards said. “He wasn’t worried about any shots prior to the ones he hit tonight. He played exceptionally well.”
The fourth quarter has been a bugbear for the Timberwolves in this series, and you could easily argue that the struggles have fallen on Towns’ shoulders. The Dallas Mavericks made the decision that Edwards wasn’t going to beat them, and he couldn’t get through the first three games.
He’s seen eyes, hands and feet come his way, and the way this team is structured, Towns has to be a dynamic scorer. What was a smart gamble backfired for the first time on Dallas’ part, and for the first time in more than a week, the Timberwolves appeared to play like the balanced team that was initially favored.
A lot can happen in eight days. Cities went from silencing doubters to making everyone grow again, in full effect, with the stakes higher than ever. This wasn’t about him putting up flashy but empty numbers, it was about Towns preventing his team from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
It was about Towns adapting as the franchise moves forward, especially when his coach, Chris Finch, said his performance in Game 3 was “tough to watch” as Towns went 5-for-18.
“He’s been a big part of every series so far (now) and we knew we had to include him in this series,” Finch said. “Tonight was a big step towards that.
“KAT is a great player. His fights wouldn’t last forever. He got into trouble, but we left him out there. He left it rolling. He played smart, played under control. I’m very proud of him.
But if there’s been a theme in these playoffs, specifically the last two years, it’s been players shedding the skin of disappointment, defying the NBA world’s collective confirmation bias of first impressions and forging new narratives.
Like Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets last year. Like the duo of Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving this year. Like the Boston Celtics in the East.
It may be too late for Towns and the Timberwolves this year — the hole they dug is probably too deep to recover from — but they are too young to believe otherwise. This is not a very young team, there are veterans who express the urgency, who are good enough to influence the victory, but cannot lead it.
“He’s been the talk of the series when he can’t make shots,” veteran point guard Mike Conley (14 points, seven assists) told Yahoo Sports of Towns. “For him to block all of that out, to refocus his intention to win, is impressive. The guy works very hard and not being rewarded for that in the first three games, it hurts to see him like this. But you keep pursuing it and maybe the tide will turn.”
The Timberwolves entered the American Airlines Center knowing that a celebration could be held in this home, and all they had to do was cooperate, concede, “good job, good effort” and enter the offseason.
But these guys are spectacularly stubborn, they ignore the most obvious statistics and they have the audacity to believe they will be back for Game 6 and then Game 7.
“This is no time to have doubts,” Towns said. “I’m going to go out there, be aggressive. Shoot my shot. Like I’ve been doing every series and have confidence in every shot I make.”
Towns got his team of eight wrong, because it’s clear this series needs more suspense in a compressed time. This only opened the door for Edwards, who slowly seems to be discovering the spaces in Dallas’ defense to assert himself.
Especially with Mavericks center Dereck Lively II out with a sprained neck, Edwards found more space — throwing himself into bodies at the rim, rarely being rewarded for it but being relentless in his approach.
Missing an elbow with 1:25 left wasn’t going to stop him from throwing another one — from a greater distance. Then he put more elevation on his 20-foot jump shot, giving the Timberwolves a 102-97 lead with 38.8 seconds left.
“I was on the bench, I sat in the front row to watch, yeah, when I fouled out,” Towns said with a laugh. “I’m seeing Ant, in a way visualizing that makeup. He got to exactly where he wanted to be.”
Edwards again flirted with a triple-double, with 29 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists. But most importantly, this lively group has reason to feel like they’re growing, even through failure, even if the elimination that history says is certain to happen.
“We could very well shake things up,” Edwards told his teammates in the locker room, beaming with confidence.
For the first time in this series, perhaps an anomaly, they held the powerful duo of Dončić and Irving to subpar performances. Dončić was spectacular, but he could only muster magic in a few moments, compared to his total dominance of the game in the first three matches.
The Timberwolves were able to withstand Dončić’s 28 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists because they didn’t let him use the entire court as his personal playground, forcing him and Irving to shoot 33 percent each.
This is a formula that seems repeatable for at least one more game. But can they grow even larger in the space of two days, then another two days, then another?
“It’s not a question of can we or can’t we,” Conley told Yahoo Sports. “We have to.”
