The Timberwolves played without their top defensive player in Monday’s Game 2 in Denver, yet turned in perhaps their best defensive performance of the season, suffocating the Nuggets to go up 2-0 in the Western Conference semifinals.

How do you explain that? Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said the performance without Rudy Gobert was actually a testament to Gobert’s impact.

“His presence and what he’s infused into the team, how important defense is and how great we can be when we play it,” Finch said. “Rudy’s driven the defensive culture here.”

The culture where everyone takes pride in the defensive end — paying attention to the details of the game plan and winning their individual matchups on a possession-by-possession basis. That’s how you sustain yourself as the top defensive team in the NBA.

“Our identity is defense,” Wolves big man Naz Reid said.

But really, it’s more than that. The Wolves’ identity is bringing a winning-level of effort to the court every game, no matter who is available or not. If you’re going to beat the Timberwolves, you’re going to have to make the plays to win it.

And making those plays is increasingly difficult to do when a defender — or two — is consistently occupying your airspace.

To beat Minnesota in the playoffs, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to be willing to drop the gloves and exchange blows. You have to be willing and able to exert yourself to your maximum potential for 48 straight minutes — 48 minutes of hell.

It’s a miserable existence for a basketball team but — as these playoffs and the Timberwolves’ rising popularity have shown — an enticing watch for basketball fans. The Timberwolves are gaining supporters with each passing performance.

This team’s culture is one the sport’s fanatics can rally around.

“It’s always been … gotta learn how to compete, then you gotta learn how to always compete and then you gotta learn how to compete at the high levels,” Finch said. “When you do that, you give yourselves a chance to win no matter who is available on your roster. The goal has always been to put out a team that people like to cheer for. That doesn’t happen unless you play hard and it usually doesn’t happen unless you play defense and share the ball. We’re doing all those things right now.”

Giving yourself a chance to win regardless of the lineup. Putting out a team people like to cheer for. Playing hard every night. Those traits define the 2023-24 Minnesota Timberwolves. But this isn’t the first Timberwolves team that has exhibited those traits.

Those are exactly the characteristics you wouldd use to describe the 2021-22 Minnesota Timberwolves. That was a plucky bunch that first put the Wolves back on the map of the local sports scene.

That season featured a win over Boston with a COVID-depleted roster led by Jaylen Nowell and Greg Monroe. By season’s end, Target Center was the host of numerous basketball parties, including a raucous regular-season finale in which Minnesota played no one of note but still battled to the end with the likes of Nathan Knight in a tight loss to Chicago.

“This is a team a lot of people like to watch play. We play hard, share the ball. It’s pretty exciting,” Finch said that season. “Even our mistakes are interesting. It feels like we’ve got something growing here and we’ve just got to keep building on it. It’s our responsibility to keep giving them performances they can cheer on.”

The mistakes — which, as Finch noted, were interesting — were sometimes frequent, but they were generally made with the best intentions in mind. The 2021-22 Wolves were scrappy, hard-working and resilient. This year’s team hasn’t lost three games in a row all season; the squad from two years ago didn’t lose three in a row over its final 46 games.

That team just wasn’t as veteran and smart as this year’s edition, nor nearly as good. But it wasn’t for a lack of effort.

There was no Mike Conley, nor Rudy Gobert.

The roster was not built to play defense, but managed to survive — and at times thrive — on that end due to shear hustle. Anthony Edwards was 20 years old at the time, and Jaden McDaniels was 21/ Both were still NBA infants. Naz Reid was 22 years old and still in the process of refining his skill and sculpting his body. Karl-Anthony Towns was still learning how to play winning basketball.

But that team similarly bought into playing hard and conforming to an identity. It was also a group of guys who mostly like one another and had fun on the floor. Those players were also held to a certain standard, and strived to reach it.

It all resulted in a wildly overachieving team that won 46 regular-season games.

That season made it clear that Finch was both a motivator and a unifier. If he could get a team with a backcourt of D’Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley and Nowell to buy in, doing so with this year’s collection of talent has likely been a breeze.

At the end of that season, Patrick Beverley was asked what Minnesota needed to do to take the next step defensively. He responded with one word: “personnel.”

That has been upgraded in a big way over the past two seasons, via both transactions and development.

Minnesota’s current roster is elite — both from talent and depth perspectives. But that doesn’t always guarantee success. Better talent doesn’t necessarily equal better results.

The players, no matter how good and experienced they are, still must work together toward a common goal and supply the necessary sweat equity to reach the desired results.

When you can do that with championship-caliber players, you compete for titles, as the Timberwolves are primed to do this postseason.

When you can do that with two very different rosters in terms of quality and personality, you’ve achieved a sustained culture — one Finch and his coaching staff have cultivated for years now — that currently is producing a bountiful harvest.

“When I first got here, it wasn’t the best, it wasn’t perfect. But obviously we’re all humans, (and) over that time we gradually got better. We got more cultured,” Reid said. “Time (came) to where we kind of became a unit, a team where we trust each other. We’re selling out for each other. Even Rudy not being here (for Monday’s game), we love that he had his child, so just the trust and the love we have for each other is on another level.”

A championship level.

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Two sets of sisters, both raised in Minneapolis in the early 20th century. Each family forms a swing-centered nightclub act full of tight harmonies and lavish choreography. Both sets of siblings end up in Hollywood movies and entertaining American troops during World War II.

One group was the Andrews Sisters, the other the Kim Loo Sisters. And it says something that History Theatre — which specializes in spinning stories about Minnesota history — has created two musicals about the Andrews Sisters and none about the Kim Loo Sisters.

Until now. The story of this quite popular but largely forgotten sister act from Minneapolis is at last being told in a co-production from History Theatre and Theater Mu called “Blended Harmony: The Kim Loo Sisters.” With a book and lyrics by Jessica Huang and a swinging score by Jacinth Greywoode, it’s a production with a lot of promise and much to recommend it.

But Huang seems so intent on cutting into the historical deficit of information about the Kim Loo Sisters that she tells us a lot more than we need to know.

The result is a two-hour-and-45-minute musical that features 24 songs, but would probably be more entertaining if it were trimmed down to two hours and 14 songs. By show’s end, I felt that I didn’t know enough about half of this sister act, but way more than I needed to about sometime collaborator Ann Miller, their mother, the producer of their shows, the husband of one and a Chinese general.

Audrey Parker, from left, Audrey Mojica, Morgan Kempton and Suzie Juul in the History Theatre’s world premiere production of “Blended Harmony: The Kim Loo Sisters,” a musical by Jacinth Graywoode and Jessica Huang about four sisters from Minnesota who became a very popular nightclub act in the first half of the 20th century before anti-Asian sentiment during World War II sabotaged their career. Co-produced with Theater Mu, the show runs through May 26, 2024 at the History Theatre in St. Paul. (Rich Ryan / History Theatre)

In short, it’s an overstuffed musical that takes the audience off on unnecessary tangents. As the powers-that-be at Theater Mu and History Theatre discussed what to leave in and what to take out, it seems the answer was invariably, “Leave it in.”

Perhaps “Blended Harmony” would be a stronger show if the focus remained more squarely on the sister act at its center. The musical is most interesting when exploring their relationships with one another and how they were shaped by their Minneapolis upbringing, their father a Chinese-American chef at downtown Minneapolis restaurant Nankin and their Polish-American mother escaping life as a laundress to become the sister act’s crafty, deal-cutting (and dress-making) manager.

Alas, the story veers off into that long-distance marriage and how it got started, negotiating contracts, Mom’s upbringing in Poland, life on a Chinese military base, and whatever is on Ann Miller’s mind. While Audrey Parker does some impressive dancing as that great Hollywood tapper, her soliloquies do nothing to drive the story forward.

That said, there’s a whole lot of talent onstage. Among the sisters, the conflicted Jenee is the one we get to know best, and Kelsey Angel Baehrens makes her invariably intriguing, while Audrey Mojica is magnetic as the flirtatious youngest sister, Bubbles. Meanwhile, Ann Michels makes the most of her turn as their enterprising mother, while J.C. Cutler is an eminently convincing head honcho of their musical revues.

Kudos are also due choreographer Rush Benson, the costumes of Mathew J. LeFebvre and the inventive use of projections by Mina Kinukawa and Miko Simmons. Here’s hoping that this story that richly deserves to be told re-emerges in a more svelte rendition.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

‘Blended Harmony: The Kim Loo Sisters’

When: Through May 26

Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul

Tickets: $74-$15, available at 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com

Capsule: A story worth telling, but with fewer digressions.

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Xcel Energy customers taken aback by a mailer marketing insurance coverage for the water line and electrical systems on the exterior of their home can rest assured the offers are legitimate. The utility company previously owned HomeSmart, a monthly subscription service that offers check-ups and in some cases replacement coverage for home appliances.

Xcel, which operates in eight states, has sold its HomeSmart coverage line to HomeServe, a nationwide provider that has been soliciting homeowners with offers to cover exterior water line and electrical system repairs.

“It’s a legitimate mailer,” said Theo Keith, a Twin Cities-based Xcel Energy spokesman. “It’s co-branded between us and HomeServe. It’s approved by us. … This mailer was meant as an introduction to customers that it’s now called HomeServe.”

The two types of coverage are being advertised for about $72 annually, or a combined $130.

“The whole point of it is to minimize unexpected repairs on the customer side, because the customer owns that part of the infrastructure,” Keith said.

Exterior water, electrical lines

Homeowners may not be aware that they own the water line extending from their house, out under the sidewalk and into the public water main in the street. If that should rupture or crumble with age, they could be on the hook for repair and replacement costs, which can stretch into thousands of dollars.

Homeowners also own certain aspects of exterior electrical systems, such as a meter base, service entrance conductor, weatherhead and riser.  The weatherhead is the gooseneck-like rod, or entry point, where overhead power lines enter the home or transition between overhead and underground cables.

In an email, a HomeServe spokesman said the company works with some 5 million customers and 1,250 municipal and utility providers across North America, offering a variety of coverage types for appliances and other home repairs. Residents who may not have received the mailing can visit homesmartplans.com to see all their program offers or call HomeServe at 1-844-245-3657 for more information.

“We sold our HomeSmart service business to HomeServe because they have an excellent track record of customer service and will offer our customers a greater variety of product offerings to fit their needs,” Keith said.

The financial terms of the sale have been kept private.

Pros and cons

HomeServe’s U.S. offices are based in Norwalk, Conn., and opened in 2003. The company was founded in Britain in 1993 and has since expanded to France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Canada and Japan.

Like home warranties, subscription repair services are not without their critics.

“My main concern would be families feeling pressured to enroll in a service that seems to be coming from their utility provider when it’s actually from a random third party with little to no verifiable local presence,” said Matt Privratsky, a St. Paul-based clean energy advocate.

“It can be hard, particularly for new residents, to learn what’s truly needed and necessary to maintain your home and these kinds of services, in particular, feel tailor-made to take advantage of that fear and anxiety,” he said.

Then again, there’s something to be said for sleeping worry-free.

Consumer websites like Marketwatch.com say homeowners would do well to calculate the cost of an unused home warranty or subscription repair service over time — say, multiply the subscription cost by five or six years — and weigh that against the cost of an unexpected appliance repair and the impact on personal savings. Coverage may be less important for new or frequently updated appliances and service systems.

“You may pay a bit more in the long run by purchasing a home warranty than going without one, but millions of homeowners feel that the benefits are well worth the price,” reads Marketwatch.com.

St. Paul replacing lead lines

Some potential HomeServe customers have questioned why they would buy coverage for their water line when the city of St. Paul and water utility are currently replacing thousands of lead service lines free of charge for homeowners.

Working alongside the city, St. Paul Regional Water Services has made it a goal over the next decade to replace 26,000 lead lines servicing private homes, most of them in St. Paul.

Using state and federal aid, those replacement costs have been free to date for hundreds of homeowners, though officials have acknowledged that it will be a challenge to find full funding for what could be a $223 million undertaking over the course of a decade.

St. Paul homeowners can determine if they have a lead service line by visiting the interactive map available at StPaul.gov/Water.

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