Every single time Luka Doncic made a shot on Thursday night at Target Center, he let somebody hear about it. Whether he was shouting at the Timberwolves’ bench, or showboating to the fans sitting courtside, Doncic singlehandedly sucked the life out of the building on his way to ending Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals before it really even got started.

He literally outscored the Timberwolves by himself in the opening 12 minutes of play. He made highly contested shots on the perimeter look like routine jumpers. He slithered his way into the paint before finding his teammates for easy buckets at the rim.

 

In the end, the Doncic finished with a casual 36 points, landing the knockout blow in the early stages as the Mavericks coasted to a 124-103 win to send the Timberwolves packing. He hit the Michael Jordan shrug for good measure down the stretch after banking in a shot from long range.  It was an otherworldly performance from somebody who looks to be coming for the crown bestowed upon the NBA’s best player.

It was also proof of how far Anthony Edwards has to go if he wants to lead the Timberwolves to an NBA championship.  Never mind that Edwards finished with 28 points to lead the Timberwolves in scoring. That stat line is very deceiving, considering Edwards did almost all of his damage when things were already well out of reach.

The stark contrast between Doncic and Edwards was on display time and time again throughout the Western Conference Finals. It’s perhaps the biggest reason this series played out the way it did, as Doncic was dominant for the Mavericks, while Edwards struggled at times for the Timberwolves.

A cliche in sports centers on young teams needing to lose before they are truly ready to win. That could also apply to young players when analyzing Doncic and Edwards.

You could tell that Doncic had been in this position before simply by the way he handled his business. He has been hardened by the last time the Mavericks were in the Western Conference Finals a couple of years ago, losing to the eventual NBA champion Golden State Warriors.

The same thing cannot be said about Edwards as he shockingly looked overwhelmed by the moment at various times. The hope for anybody that follows the Timberwolves is that this defeat in the Western Conference Finals can help Edwards grow in the same way that it so clearly did for Doncic.

Though nothing in the NBA is guaranteed, especially not somebody reaching his full potential, Edwards seems like a pretty sure thing given the current trajectory of his career. He has consistently taken steps forward, and it looks like the sky is the limit for him.

The next step for Edwards is, well, playing more like the man responsible for sending him home. Everything that Doncic did in this series should be studied by Edwards this summer.

If the Timberwolves tried to blitz him on the pick and roll, Doncic always seemed to make the right decision. If the Timberwolves tried to guard him in isolation, Doncic welcomed it before making his defender look silly. He was was in complete control, regardless of circumstance all the way until the very end.

There’s still a good chance Edwards leads the Timberwolves to the promised land in the future. He’s just not there yet. Because he’s not as good as Doncic.

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Mom and champion.

In 11 short months, Kendall Coyne Schofield delivered a child and a championship to Minnesota while at the same time realizing her vision of establishing a women’s professional hockey league in North America.

And the only moment the 32-year-old, three-time U.S. Olympian looked uncomfortable in the post-game celebration of Minnesota winning the PWHL title on Wednesday was when teammate Kelly Pannek crashed the news conference to praise her captain.

“She won’t say this but this. The only reason this happened from the players’ side is Kendall. Like legit the only reason, and she hates it (the attention),” Pannek said pointing a finger at Coyne Schofield following a Walter Cup-clinching 3-0 win over Boston in a decisive Game 5.

“To do it with a growing family and amongst all these other things, she still shows up and does her job every single day as a hockey player,” Pannek added, as Coyne Schofield squirmed in her seat “But she has like seven other jobs on top of it, the biggest one being creating this league for all of us other player to play in.”

With Coyne Schofield whispering “Thank you, Kelly,” into the microphone, Pannek responded by saying it was time to party.

It’s a celebration five years in the making since Coyne Schofield and members of the U.S. and Canadian national teams put aside their competitive differences to form the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association following the demise of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League.

And it comes less than a year since the PWHL was established after Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter bought out the rival Premier Hockey League and committed hundreds of millions of dollars to launch the six-team PWHL.

While Walter deserves credit for the financial backing, Coyne Schofield was influential for sticking to her vision of players having a voice at the negotiating table that led to players ratifying a collective bargaining agreement the same weekend she gave birth to her son.

It came full circle on Wednesday night. Coyne Schofield sealed the win by scoring into an empty net with 2:06 left before becoming the first captain to hoist the Walter Cup and share the moment with 10-month-old Drew in her arms.

“To see Kendall score an empty-netter I think was the highlight for me of the whole year,” women’s players’ association executive director Brian Burke told The Associated Press. “Kendall spearheaded this whole effort. There were a lot of women involved that deserve credit, but none even close to Kendall.”

The moment was not lost on Coyne Schofield’s competitors, including Sarah Nurse, whose PWHL Toronto team lost to Minnesota in a five-game semifinal series and is a players association vice president.

“We would not be here without her,” Nurse wrote in an email to the AP. “It’s a full-circle storybook moment that she was able to raise the Walter Cup. It has been incredible to work alongside the inspiration she is.”

And to think Coyne Schofield once worried whether she had a place in the league after taking the year off from hockey for being pregnant. Her fears were unjustified come September when Minnesota used one of its three exclusive free-agent roster spots to sign her to a three-year contract.

“I’m honored to be the first to hoist it, but it doesn’t happen without so many people,” Coyne Schofield said. “There were a lot of people who didn’t believe us. There were a lot of people that didn’t think we deserved this. … And I hope now everyone believes that we deserve this and it’s only going to keep getting better.”

She then reflected on a video she made with Drew, informing her son of preparing to play her first PWHL game on Jan. 3 in the same UMass-Lowell Tsongas Center where Minnesota clinched the title.

“There’s just so many emotions,” Coyne Schofield said. “Just hoping that people can see what’s possible. You can be a mom and you can be a professional hockey player at the same time.”

The PWHL completed a season in which its playoff seeds weren’t decided until the 72nd and final regular season game, and had two of three playoff series end in decisive Game 5s. The league average for attendance was 5,448 through the regular season, and 1,000 higher during the playoffs.

Challenges remain in Year 2, with the league needing to find a bigger home for Toronto, and a permanent home for in New York, which split time at three venues. Meantime, team nicknames and logos are finally set to be announced in August.

Issues aside, executives and players agreed in saying the season exceeded on- and off-ice expectations.

“We’re probably all in awe of what happened this year,” Montreal defenseman Erin Ambrose told the AP on Thursday. “I thought there were going to be a lot more bumps along the road than there was.”

Disappointed as she was in having Montreal’s season end in a three-game semifinal sweep to Boston, Ambrose was struck in watching Coyne Schofield accept the championship trophy from Walter.

“It was very poetic. I think if you ask any athlete in the league, we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Kendall,” Ambrose said. “I’m very, very happy for all of us this year. But I think it really was the icing on the cake for Kendall last night.”

AP Sports Writer Jimmy Golen contributed to this report.

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It was clear form the way they spoke even as the series unfolded that the Timberwolves felt as though they were the better team in the Western Conference Finals.

It was an earned arrogance. Minnesota won 56 games during the regular season. It grounded Phoenix to a pulp in the first first. It rallied past the defending champ in Round 2 — behind a dominant second-half performance on the road in Game 7 in which it physically wore Denver down.

After that performance, many pegged the Wolves as a lock to reach the NBA Finals, and perhaps even win the whole thing. The Wolves clearly believed this much — if they played their brand of physical, defensive-minded basketball, they could not be beaten.

Dallas proved it all wrong on all accounts in this series — never more so than Thursday, when the Mavericks blitzed Minnesota from start to finish at Target Center en route to a 124-103 victory to close out the West Finals with a 4-1 series victory.

The Mavericks led by 36 points at one point in the third quarter.

After Dallas’ Game 4 defeat, Kyrie Irving lamented the lost opportunity to celebrate an NBA Finals berth in front of the home crowd.

“Sorry, fans,” Irving said in his postgame press conference.

It’s like he knew what was coming. Dallas played Thursday as though it was ready for this series to wrap, and there was nothing Minnesota could do about it.

Dallas had to settle for holding its trophy presentation at Target Center, which, to be fair, proved to be awfully friendly confines for the Mavericks in this series. Dallas didn’t lose a game in Minneapolis.

Minnesota’s only victory in the series — Game 4 in Dallas — came with Mavericks’ center Dereck Lively II sidelined with a neck injury. He was back Thursday, meaning the Mavericks were again at full strength. And when the Mavericks were at full strength, they generally out-played Minnesota.

And it always started up top.

Luka Doncic sucked the life out of a raucous Target Center in the first frame Thursday. He scored 20 points in the first quarter, going 4 for 6 from the 3-point line. The most impressive hit of the quarter came when Doncic smoothly pulled up from 32 feet and hit nothing but net.

If there’s such a thing as a statement shot, that was it.

Doncic and Irving were Batman and Robin all series. It was true again Thursday, as Doncic went off for 36 points, 10 rebounds and five assists, while Irving tacked on 36 points of his own.

Doncic was easily the best player in this series. But that was likely to be expected. But what killed Minnesota was that Irving was right behind him in the series ranks.

Those two rendered Minnesota’s defensive pressure — which demoralized Phoenix and Denver — effectively moot. The two were too skilled and two crafty to have the ball just taken away from them by a hounding defender. Irving blew by Minnesota’s perimeter pressure, while Doncic either got a guy on his hip and slowly walked to the paint, or drilled a step-back triple.

They were consistent offense in this series from start to finish.

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said at various points throughout the series that Minnesota would simply need to score alongside the Mavericks at times. But that’s never been the Timberwolves’ M.O. Their defense almost always sparked their offense.

The Wolves struggled in half-court sets against quality defenses. Dallas’ defense over the past three months has been the best in the NBA, even superior to Minnesota.

So when Minnesota had to generate offense in key spots, it almost never met the challenge.

That will be something for Minnesota to address in the offseason. The offensive end is what needs to round into form for the Timberwolves to take the next step and build upon this historic season.

The Timberwolves won a series for the first time in 20 years. Then they won another. They were the NBA’s best defense over the course of the full season by a mile and knocked off the defending champs when few gave them an opportunity to do so.

Anthony Edwards — who scored 28 points Thursday to tie Karl-Anthony Towns for the team high — ascended to become one of the best, and perhaps most liked, players in basketball. Rudy Gobert won another Defensive Player of the Year honor. The Target Center crowd was treated to an enjoyable brand of basketball all season long.

After booing at points in the third frame as the season unraveled before their eyes, fans sent Minnesota out with a sea of cheers — and one more “Let’s Go Wolves!” chant — as the final horn sounded Thursday.

But the bad taste of the final game fans saw up close and personal will likely linger for awhile.

It’s roughly 1:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, and tipoff between the Timberwolves and Dallas Mavericks is quickly approaching.

As the hustle and bustle in downtown Minneapolis slowly picks up ahead of Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals, well over 100 employees of the Timberwolves are working feverishly inside Target Center making sure everything is set up for the occasion.

There are pockets of people in different sections throughout the building draping shirts on seats and laying towels on top of that. The scene resembles something out of National Geographic, like various ant colonies working in unison to complete a task.

This is how every seat gets a shirt and towel for Timberwolves playoff games. The giveaway for fans has produced immaculate vibes at Target Center over the past month. It’s spectacular to see more than 18,000 fans wearing the same shirt while waving the same towel.

That’s exactly what the Timberwolves are going for as vice president of fan experience Jeff Munneke is concerned.

He doesn’t want fans thinking about the work that went into the moment. He just wants them to soak in every second of it.

“Just being able to do something like this helps create even more of an atmosphere inside the building,” said Munneke, the organization’s longest-tenured employee, who was hard at work in Section 110 in the hours leading up to tipoff. “You’ve got people walking into the Target Center, and they’re howling and chanting. There’s already a bounce to everybody’s step, and then they come in here and it’s so vibrant with the shirts and towels. It’s a lot of fun.”

The planning process for the Timberwolves started with casual conversations in late February and early March.

What did they want the giveaways to entail?  What was the aesthetic going to look like? What were they going to do to promote whatever they decided on?

“We decided to do both a shirt and a towel,” said chief marketing officer Mike Grahl, who was bouncing around Section 108 helping anywhere he could. “There was so much energy around, so we wanted to give fans something to wear and something to wave.”

The design for each shirt and towel has come from within the organization. That allowed the Timberwolves to stray from the plainness that is usually associated with giveaways.

“We’ve had a lot of fun with it,” Grahl said. “We’ve gotten to lean into a little bit of Wolves culture.”

It’s gotten pretty weird at times — in the best way possible — as the Timberwolves have catered to the diehard fans.

They had a shirt with niche mascot Air Crunch flying over downtown Minneapolis for a home game last round against the Denver Nuggets. They opted for a more traditional “WOLVES BACK” insignia with the Timberwolves hosting the Mavericks in Game 5.

“We always talk about this could be on somebody’s bucket list,” Munneke said. “We want to make sure it’s a great experience, because that’s what it’s all about.

There’s actually an art to the setup at Target Center. In fact, the Timberwolves sent out a tutorial video to their employees prior to the playoffs, detailing how to properly place the shirt on the seat with the towel on top. The techniques vary.

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” Munneke said. “I figured I’ve laid down almost 200,000 shirts in my life. That doesn’t include playoff games like this where we’re doing both shirts and towels. I’ve worked on every type of technique imaginable to figure out what works.”

The way the shirts and towels end up on the seat doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters to the Timberwolves is that the fans enjoy it.

“Nobody in the organization is above it,” said Kelley Wollak, a partnership and marketing executive, who took a moment to look around Target Center after finishing up her portion of the set up in Section 112. “We do it because we know it’s going to make a big impact for our fans. Just seeing how much joy each shirt and towel brings the fans makes it all worth it. It’s incredible to see it all come together in that moment when it’s tipoff, and everybody is wearing their shirt and waving their towel.”

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