The Timberwolves emphasized defensive tenacity throughout the first week of training camp. The whistle was blown by coaches when on-ball pressure wasn’t cranked up to the necessary degree in practices described as “intense.”

The goal of it all is to return Minnesota’s defensive nastiness to something resembling where it was two seasons ago, when the Wolves were the NBA’s best on that end of the floor by a wide margin.

And yet, when the rubber met the road in Minnesota’s home preseason bout Tuesday against the Pacers, the Wolves were horrendous on that end out of the gates. Indiana scored 37 points in the opening frame, while shooting 65% from the field and 63% from distance while getting whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted.

“That’s inexcusable,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch admitted.

Yes, it’s only preseason. But it should be noted in four exhibition games in which their regulars played ahead of the 2023-24 season, the Wolves starters allowed 20 points or fewer in the opening frame thrice.

A tone was set that October that was maintained throughout the season.

The tone Tuesday was one more of: “Yeah, ideally we’d like to defend. But only if you don’t make it overly difficult to do.”

Until things shifted over the final eight minutes of the first half. That’s when Jaylen Clark finally entered into the contest and injected a toughness and defensive determination that’d been lacking. Clark gave all-star forward Pascal Siakam no room to breathe on one play, forcing the forward into a difficult baseline jumper he missed, while also creating havoc via tips and strips that led to extra Wolves’ possessions.

Suddenly, the game that was initially so easy for Indiana became far more difficult.

The Pacers scored 141 points per 100 possessions before Clark’s entrance. That number dipped to 81 over the remainder of the half with the perimeter stopper on the floor.

Clark is the guy Wolves star Anthony Edwards often tabs to play 1 on 1 against in an effort to sharpen his skills. Edwards noted he scores on Clark maybe 50% of the time.

“I like it at 50-50 right now, because I don’t want nothing easy. Jaylen Clark, he definitely get me ready for the year,” Edwards said. “He’s a tough defender, man. I’m not going to lie.”

Which makes it all the more curious as to why Clark was the ninth player to enter the game Tuesday – well after the first eight entered the affair – on a night when Jaden McDaniels didn’t play due to personal reasons.

Finch has noted Minnesota will likely have an eight-to-nine man rotation that could stretch to as many as 10, but added the ninth and 10th spots will be fluid.

No Timberwolves rotations have been finalized.  There’s plenty of preseason to still be played. But it looks like Terrence Shannon Jr. is the frontrunner for the No. 8 spot behind the top seven returners from last year’s Western Conference Finalist. Rob Dillingham is getting early run in exhibition bouts.

Clark may face an uphill battle in his pursuit of consistent minutes. He seemed to acknowledge as much himself on the team’s media day. Asked if things felt different for the soon-to-be 24 year old this fall after carving out a regular-season role for himself last season, Clark responded, “Not really.”

“Every year it starts all over again, man,” he said. “I’m back at the bottom, and I’ve got to figure out a way to claw and work my way back up to where I’m in the rotation and playing again.”

Which flies directly in the face of everything the team has said it wants to be. Much of the verbal sentiment has centered on returning to the tip top tier of NBA defenses this season. But attempting to do so without one of your two-best perimeter defenders feels like a fool’s errand. Especially following the offseason departure of Nickeil Alexnader-Walker.

Forget that Clark knocked down 43% of his 3-point attempts last season and is one of the team’s most adept offensive cutters. He’s the one wing whose sole concern on the floor is stopping the opposition. He’s not only willing to take on a Lu Dort-type role in Minnesota – he’s eager to do so.

Dillingham is a minus defender at the moment. Edwards, Shannon and Mike Conley are solid on that end. But they aren’t legitimate options to consistently pick up the opponent’s best perimeter player at the point of attack when McDaniels isn’t on the floor – not if the goal is to re-establish an Oklahoma City-like defensive aura.

The best defenders eat, sleep and breathe that side of the floor. That job requires a special level of not only effort and tenacity, but attention to detail.

Clark watches tape of Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II to gain intel on how to stay in front of shifty athletes without utilizing the type of contact that’s sure to draw an official’s attention.

“I like watching that more so than basketball, because people have counters. Ant, I know when he goes left, he loves to shoot the stepback. But if I jump at the stepback, he’s going to keep going. He’s just so fast, athletic and strong. So just having that creativity to know (what may happen),” Clark said. “In football, they know a route tree. So yeah, once he passes five yards, he can’t run a slant no more. Now, it’s a post or a 10-yard dig or in. Just process of elimination while he’s running his route.

“Same thing in basketball. If the shot clock is at 3 and they’re down two, I’m thinking he’s probably going for the win, knowing Ant. So I’m jamming this 3-point line. If he beats me to the rim, it is what it is. I got helpside, or we got overtime. I’m always thinking like that.”

Clark’s will to stop the man in front of him burns deep inside of his soul. That figures to fit Minnesota like a glove. Asked in June what the identity of an Edwards-led team should be, Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly listed two traits: competitiveness and toughness.

Jaylen Clark personified. Clark himself said the Wolves should lean into “what Minnesota is about.”

“It’s cold as hell here. Plenty of people would rather be in Miami than here when they come play,” he said. “Just embrace the fact that you know people are trying to get out of here as fast as possible. Make this night as long and hard for them as possible. Just be antagonizing, getting under people’s skin. Just being the people nobody wants to go play against. Like what Detroit used to be in the Bad Boy era against the Bulls. You just knew you were in for a long night.”

Minnesota has been at its best in recent years when it’s looked exactly like the team Clark just described. The Wolves’ signature playoff series victory in franchise history – ousting defending champion Denver in the 2024 conference semifinals – was thanks almost entirely to efforts on the defensive end.

With their backs pressed against the wall in Game 7, Minnesota held Denver to nine points over the final 10 minutes, 50 seconds of the third quarter to erase a 20-point deficit en route to an improbably victory.

That was the year in which the Wolves built an unbreakable identity of defensive dominance.

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Any path to a return to such heights likely requires Clark on the court.

BISMARCK, N.D. — A North Dakota judge has upheld the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for children, in a blow to families who have had to travel out of state to obtain the medical treatments they said are crucial for their kids’ well-being.

District Judge Jackson Lofgren’s said in his decision Wednesday that the law discriminates based on age and medical purpose, not sex, and that there’s little evidence the Legislature passed the law for “an invidious discriminatory purpose.” He also noted various concerns and ongoing debates over the medical treatments involved.

“The evidence presented at trial establishes there is a legitimate concern regarding the capacity of minors to understand and appreciate the long-term consequences of the practices prohibited by the Health Care Law,” the judge wrote, adding that he doesn’t believe the law violates the state constitution.

The ruling means parents who decided to seek gender-affirming medical care for their children after the state’s ban took effect in April 2023 will need to do so out of state.

“This ruling is devastating for transgender youth and their families in North Dakota. The evidence in this case was overwhelming: this law inflicts real harm, strips families of their constitutional rights, and denies young people the medical care they need to thrive,” Jess Braverman, the legal director for the gender equity nonprofit Gender Justice, which represented the plaintiff, said in a statement.

Republican state Rep. Bill Tveit, who introduced the legislation, said he is pleased with the ruling.

“It’s a law that needs to be there. We need to protect our youth, and that’s what the whole goal of this thing was from the beginning,” Tveit said.

The lawsuit was brought by several affected families and a pediatric endocrinologist, but the judge dismissed some of their claims and left only the physician as a plaintiff.

About half of U.S. states, nearly all of which have fully Republican-led governments, have banned gender-affirming care for minors. North Dakota’s law makes it a misdemeanor for a health care provider to prescribe or give hormone treatments or puberty blockers to a transgender child. It also makes it a felony to perform gender-affirming surgery on a minor.

The law’s backers said it would protect children from what they said are irreversible effects of treatments and surgeries, though such surgeries were never available in the state. Opponents said the law harms transgender children by denying them crucial medical care.

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Although the law exempts children who were already receiving treatments before North Dakota’s ban took effect, attorneys for the families who sued said providers held off because they perceived the law as vague and didn’t want to risk it. That led the families to miss work and school so they could travel to Minnesota for treatment.

The judge later said those kids can receive any medical care they were receiving before the law took effect, though that decision wasn’t enough of a final ruling to satisfy attorneys for health care organizations. His Wednesday ruling granted a request that those kids’ treatments continue, citing the law and his previous findings.

At least two pediatric endocrinologists were providing gender-affirming care in North Dakota before the ban.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that states can ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the care.

By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas’ top criminal court on Thursday again paused the execution of Robert Roberson, just days before he was set to become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

This was the third execution date that Roberson’s lawyers have been able to stay since 2016, including one scheduled nearly a year ago, due to an unprecedented intervention from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who believe he is innocent.

The latest execution stay was granted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Roberson had been scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Oct. 16.

The court granted the stay based on Texas’ 2013 junk science law, which allows a person convicted of a crime to seek relief if the evidence used against them is no longer credible. In granting the stay, the court cited its October 2024 ruling that overturned a conviction in another shaken baby case out of Dallas. Roberson’s lawyers argue that case is indistinguishable from Roberson’s.

The appeals court sent Roberson’s case back to his trial court in East Texas for review.

Since his first execution date more than nine years ago, Roberson’s lawyers have filed multiple petitions with state and federal appeals courts, as well as with the U.S. Supreme Court, to try and stop his execution. Over the years, they have also asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott to stop his lethal injection, as part of their efforts to secure Roberson a new trial.

Prosecutors at Roberson’s 2003 trial argued that he hit his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis and violently shook her, causing severe head trauma. They said she died from injuries related to shaken baby syndrome.

Roberson has long proclaimed his innocence, telling The Associated Press in an interview last week from death row in Livingston, Texas, that he never abused his daughter.

“I never shook her or hit her,” he said.

The diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor.

Roberson’s lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia. They say his conviction was based on flawed and now outdated scientific evidence.

In their latest appeal, Roberson’s lawyers included what they say are new legal and scientific developments and expert analyses that show Nikki’s death was caused by illness and accident, not by abuse.

Roberson’s lawyers also included a joint statement from 10 independent pathologists who said the medical examiner’s autopsy report, which concluded Nikki died from blunt force head injuries, was “not reliable.”

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His attorneys have also claimed that new evidence shows judicial misconduct in Roberson’s case. They allege the judge who presided over Roberson’s trial never disclosed he was the one who authorized circumventing Roberson’s parental rights and allowing Nikki’s grandparents to remove her from life support.

The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as some medical experts and other family members of Nikki, maintain the girl died because of child abuse and that Roberson had a history of hitting his daughter.

In a Sept. 26 op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, three pediatricians, including two with the Yale School of Medicine, said they reviewed the case and “are convinced that Nikki was a victim of child abuse.”

Shaken baby syndrome has come under scrutiny in recent years; some lawyers and medical experts say the diagnosis has wrongly sent people to prison. Prosecutors and medical societies say it remains valid.

Roberson’s supporters include both liberal and ultraconservative lawmakers, Texas GOP megadonor and conservative activist Doug Deason, bestselling author John Grisham, and Brian Wharton, the former police detective who helped put together the case against him.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on a group of 50 people, companies and ships largely out of the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and China, alleging they were facilitating the shipment of Iranian oil and sales of liquefied petroleum gas.

Included in the penalties are two dozen “shadow fleet” ships flagged across multiple nations, concealing the origin of Iranian oil and circumvents earlier sanctions; a China-based crude oil terminal; and a non-state-owned Chinese refinery. The Treasury Department said they are key to Iran’s ability to export petroleum and petroleum products.

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The department said the entities and individuals cited enabled the export of billions of dollars worth of oil and gas products, aiding Iran’s government.

The administration is citing a collection of executive orders signed by Republican President Donald Trump, including one in February that calls for the United States to “drive Iran’s export of oil to zero.”

Among other things, the sanctions deny the people and companies access to any property or financial assets held in the U.S. and prevent U.S. businesses and citizens from doing business with them.

Trump’s “maximum pressure” on Iran is meant to deny Tehran access to nuclear weapons, and during the summer, the U.S. and Israel engaged in several bombardments of Tehran’s nuclear and military sites.

The United Nations reimposed sanctions on Iran in September over its nuclear program, further squeezing the country as Iranians increasingly find themselves priced out of the food and worried about their futures. Iran’s rial currency is at a record low, increasing pressure on food prices and making daily life that much more challenging.

Since January, the administration has imposed sanctions on 166 ships tied to the Iranian oil trade. The new sanctions target a second Chinese oil terminal and a fourth independently owned refinery in China.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement that the administration is disrupting the Iranian government’s “ability to fund terrorist groups that threaten the United States.”