OKLAHOMA CITY — Timberwolves coach Chris Finch walked into the locker room after Minnesota’s Game 1 defeat at the hands of the Thunder to open the Western Conference Finals and told his team the good news:
Now they know what it looks like.
The Thunder were the best team in the NBA all season for a reason. They harass you physically on both ends of the floor, with relentless defensive ball pressure and a constant attacking of the rim on offense.
Oklahoma City brought both in full force on Tuesday, and Minnesota finally broke. This is not a Lakers team sporting obvious holes after being constructed on the fly this season, nor a Golden State team playing without one of its best player.
This is a fully-healthy, fine-tuned killing machine. And to contend in this series, Minnesota will have to do everything it has done to date in this postseason, only better.
“I think we knew coming in it was going to be different,” Wolves guard Mike Conley said. “It’s going to be more mental than it is anything. We’ve been through a lot of dog fights throughout these playoffs, but now it’s about matchups and different lineups and looking up at the score and seeing you just gave up a 6-0 run, can we calm it down? Can we not rush a quick 3? Get we get something good offensively? Can we settle it down?”
Those are a lot of questions to answer.
“We have to really, really be locked in on that. Especially against a team like OKC,” Conley added. “They thrive when you take those quick, bad shots and they take off in transition and get going and get their crowd going.”
Take care of the ball. Make smart, crisp decisions. Be physical and locked in defensively. The Timberwolves were well aware of the formula to topple the Thunder at the series’ outset. But perhaps now there’s a realization of the urgency that will be required to execute it.
Because now the Wolves have seen what it looks like when they don’t possess as much. Minnesota turned the ball over a whopping 19 times, directly leading to 31 points for the Thunder, all while struggling from the field. Minnesota committed six turnovers in the opening seven minutes of Game 1 as it attempted to attack off the bounce in isolation situations, to no avail.
If you hold the ball or overdribble against Oklahoma City, you’re dead.
“It’s hard to process,” Edwards said of the Thunder defense. “It was different every time. I mean, heavy in the gaps, sometimes trap the ball screen, sometimes don’t. Sometimes just run and jump. It was kind of similar to AAU. They remind me of an AAU defensive team: just run and jump, fly around.”
How do you combat that?
Conley said it’s by being crisp and executing with more energy. That’s how you set the tone and establish yourself as the aggressors.
“If we can just be more assertive on that end, (then we can) get the ball to spots where you need it to be so we can start running our actions with some pace, with some kind of discipline through it,” Conley said.
All things that require intention.
It was no secret that Oklahoma City ramps up its aggression far beyond anything anyone has produced against Minnesota.
“That’s kind of their identity,” Wolves forward Naz Reid said. “We just let it get the best of us today. We know better. We’ve got to be better. The beauty of it is you play (on Thursday).”
That’s Game 2, which now carries a heightened weight for Minnesota. This is not the type of team you want to fall behind 2-0 in a best-of-7 series.
Edwards said it was “pretty good” for the Wolves to get the poor response “out of our system” on Tuesday.
Minnesota just completed a series in which it delivered a clunker in Game 1 and rallied to win the series in five games. But, again, this is different.
“We proved that we can do it, but we’ve got to make it happen, too,” Julius Randle said. “We can’t just be like, ‘All right, we did it last series. I mean, we’re going to do it again.’ This is a great team. They’ve been playing great basketball all year.”
And Minnesota will have to play great to match it.
“We’ll be ready for it Game 2,” Edwards said. “We should be ready.”
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