There’s a moment from last season that has thrilled Wolves fans for a year plus. Dallas had the ball with a chance to tie the game in the closing seconds, and Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards stonewalled Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic, forcing a turnover to secure Minnesota’s victory.

With a chance to repeat history Friday, Minnesota couldn’t get the same stop.

Down two in the closing seconds, Doncic forced a switch onto Rudy Gobert, stepped back to fire from behind the 3-point line and drilled it with three second to play.

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said the defensive game plan was to switch and then press up on anyone beyond the 3-point line. Gobert wasn’t able to apply quite enough pressure.

“He hit a big-time shot. I let my team down,” Gobert said. “They believed in me to get a stop, and they scored. He scored with a three. It’s something that he does really well. Definitely taking that responsibility. I’ve got to be better in that situation.”

Naz Reid then missed a good look at the horn on the other end, as Dallas rallied for a 109-108 victory at Target Center to take a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference semifinals.

“I thought it was good,” Anthony Edwards said of the shot.

But it wasn’t, and that was the difference. Dallas hit a shot when it mattered most, and Minnesota didn’t.

Trailing by seven to start the fourth quarter, Dallas opened the period on an 8-0 run to take the lead and force a Minnesota timeout. That started a back-and-forth affair in which the two teams traded blows offensively.

Finally, Dallas flinched in the final two minutes. On one possession, Derrick Jones Jr. and Kyrie Irving missed open triples. Then, Irving got to the free-throw line but missed twice. On the other end, Anthony Edwards attacked twice and got to the free-throw line both times, hitting all four attempts to stretch the lead to five with 90 seconds to play.

Ballgame, right? Not against these Mavericks.

Irving hit a triple, Dallas got multiple stops — including forcing a turnover by Edwards — and the Mavericks had the ball down two with 12.8 seconds to play. Then it was Doncic time. Doncic finished with 32 points, 13 assists and 10 boards. The Mavericks shot 60 percent from the floor in the second half.

Minnesota simply cannot end up in clutch-time situations against two of the league’s great late-game assassins.

“They’re two of the best at playmaking as well as going and getting their own bucket,” Mike Conley said. “In a series like this, you almost can’t be reliant on going into a close, one-possession game in fourth quarters, because those guys can get a bucket in multiple different ways. They’re probably two of the best at doing it, so we have to find ways to where if we have leads — six point leads — make it eight, make it 10. Try to stretch the game out a little bit to where it puts more pressure on them.”

At one point early in the fourth quarter, Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns were a combined 8 for 32 from the floor.

Minnesota decided to sit Towns in favor of Naz Reid down the stretch, while Edwards was largely moved off the ball. Both were necessary decisions. Reid missed his last attempt but did drill seven triples. Minnesota’s best offense was run by Mike Conley, who tallied 18 points.

Minnesota led by as many as 18 late in the second quarter. The Timberwolves were imposing their will on the defensive end and generating good offense. It looked like a patented Wolves’ playoff blowout.

But Dallas closed the half on an 8-2 run to get within 12 at the break and continued to make just enough plays to hang around and position itself for a run. The run was made, and now Minnesota heads to Dallas firmly on the ropes. Game 3 is Sunday in Dallas.

“I don’t really think anybody is frustrated — that’s the best part about it,” Reid said. “We know that it’s us. We just have to get into our ways and our brand of basketball, knowing that it’s us and we’re beating ourselves, for the most part.”

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In a span of less than three weeks, Minnesota’s fortunes in the Professional Women’s Hockey League have gone from near catastrophe to being on the cusp of capturing the inaugural PWHL championship.

Nicole Hensley

The Walter Cup will be in the building on Sunday as Minnesota looks to close out Boston after taking a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five Finals on Friday at Xcel Energy Center with a 4-1 victory. An announced crowd of 9,054 was in a festive mood from the start, and the home team did not disappoint.

After squeaking into the playoffs despite losing its last five games of the regular season, Minnesota soon found itself down two games to none against top-seeded Toronto in the first round. Since then, Minnesota has gone 5-1 and has looked every bit the part of the team that was among the league’s elite for most of the season.

Minnesota took a 2-0 lead into the locker room after the first period and controlled play for most the night. Minnesota outshot Boston 25-19.

Nicole Hensley got her second straight start in goal for Minnesota after earning the shutout in Game 2. While she wasn’t tested often, she was called upon to make a handful of key saves.

Minnesota needed only 59 seconds to take a 1-0 lead. Michela Cava stole the puck behind the Boston net and centered it into the slot. Taylor Heise jumped on the loose puck and fired a wrist shot past Boston goaltender Aerin Frankel for her fifth goal of the postseason.

Sydney Brodt made it 2-0 at 17:38. Brittyn Fleming circled the Boston net with the puck before attempting a stuff shot. Frankel was there for the stop, but Brodt poked in the loose puck in the slot for her first goal and first point in the playoffs.

Boston scored the only goal in the second period, and it came with two seconds to play. Alina Muller pounced on a loose puck in front of the Minnesota net and fired it past Hensley.

Michela Cava

The goal changed the complexion of the game, but only briefly. Cava scored a huge goal at 3:27 of the third period to give Minnesota a 3-1 lead. After taking a cross-ice pass from Heise at center ice, Cava stick-handled past two defenders before slipping the puck past Frankel for her third goal of the playoffs.

Hensley made a big save on a point-blank shot with just over six minutes to play that led to the crowd chanting her last name in appreciation.

Boston went on a power play at 15:37 and elected to pull its goalie. The move backfired, however, when Grace Zumwinkle poked the puck out of the Minnesota zone, outraced two defenders and slid the puck into the empty net as she was being dragged down.

Zumwinkle slid into the back of the net just after the puck crossed the goal line.

Briefly

The PWHL announced prior to the game that the draft will be held June 10 at Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul. The PWHL Awards will take place the following afternoon inside the Great River Ballroom at the InterContinental St. Paul Riverfront Hotel. Tickets to the draft are free and will become available on May 29.

There are 20 Minnesotans playing in the PWHL, and 16 of them are competing in the PWHL Finals.

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It’s been a month to forget at the plate for Twins catcher Christian Vázquez, who snapped an 0-for-27 skid just a few days ago. The same goes for Alex Kirilloff, who entered the day hitting under .100 in May.

But on Friday, that duo helped the Twins defeat the reigning World Series champions, each driving in a run in Minnesota’s 3-2 win over the Texas Rangers in the series opener at Target Field.

Kirilloff showed off a pretty swing, hitting a long blast to right field in the fourth inning, a home run which provided the difference.

It came two innings after Twins hitters had rallied to tie the game up with a pair of runs in the bottom of the second. Vázquez’s double brought home the Twins’ first run of the night, and the very next  batter, Edouard Julien, grounded out to second, bringing home another run.

Vázquez went 2 for 4, marking his first multi-hit game of the month, though his trip around the bases resulted in him easily getting thrown out at home after he blew past third base coach Tommy Watkins’ late stop sign.

That put an end to a good scoring chance, but because of a stout effort from Twins pitchers, they were able to hold strong with their slim one-run advantage.

The game got off to an inauspicious start for the Twins: Starter Bailey Ober walked leadoff Marcus Semien and allowed a home run to Corey Seager, but he worked through a turbulent first and second innings and then settled down.

Though his 30-pitch first inning ratcheted up his pitch count quickly, Ober threw five innings. The final hit he gave up, a single to Josh Smith in the fifth inning, was the only hit Twins pitchers gave up from the third inning onward.

Steven Okert, Caleb Thielbar and Griffin Jax each threw a scoreless inning before Jhoan Duran rebounded with one of his own, a welcomed sign after the Twins closer surrendered three home runs on the latest road trip.

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When the Timberwolves were devising ways to slow, or at least make life difficult, on Denver center Nikola Jokić in the Western Conference quarterfinals, they had a pretty good stand-in.

“It was a lot of fun for me, and I took it very seriously,” third-year pro Luka Garza said before Minnesota’s Game 2 against Dallas at Target Center on Friday night.

Garza isn’t a three-time NBA Most Valuable Player — he’s still trying to find regular playing time after being a second-round pick in the 2021 draft — and Jokic has almost 50 pounds on the former Iowa center. But they’re both bigs who can shoot and pass.

“I tried to give these guys the best looks I could and try to replicate the things he does,” said Garza, a 6-foot-10, 235-pound center who was a two-time Big Ten player of the year in Iowa City. “Obviously, it’s a guy I watch a ton of film on, so it was pretty easy for me to kind of know what he’s going to do.”

Garza, 25, is in his third NBA season and played in a career-low 25 regular-season games in his second season in Minnesota. But that was to be expected.

“I came into this year fully understanding what my role was,” he said. “It’s as an emergency guy behind three of the best bigs in the league.”

That would be 2023-24 NBA defensive player of the year Rudy Gobert, four-time all-star Karl-Anthony Towns and 2023-24 NBA sixth man of the year Naz Reid. It’s a formidable rotation and doesn’t leave a lot of minutes for Garza. That’s OK, especially as those three have racked up big minutes in the Timberwolves’ run into the Western Conference semifinals for the second time in franchise history.

The last time, Garza was 5.

“Obviously, I’m a basketball player, I want to be on the floor,” Garza said. “But I understand I can help this team in a lot of different ways — on the scout team, giving guys energy on the bench, whatever I can do.”

Garza got some good playing time late in Minnesota’s 45-point Game 6 victory over Denver at Target Center — eight points and two boards in 8 minutes of garbage time. Overall, he has played in six postseason games and scored 23 points in 23 minutes.

Maybe his biggest contribution so far, or at least his most enjoyable, was playing Jokić for the scout team. Like everything Garza has done since leaving college — he essentially mastered the NBA G League, averaging 36.7 points and 12.3 boards in 16 games — it also was a learning experience.

“It’s not often that guys are setting ball screens for me, and that’s what happened to me in practice. So, I’m getting to read the floor,” he said. “And obviously when you’re trying to replicate someone who’s as good a passer (as Jovic), you’re trying passes I normally would never throw.

“So, I think for me it continues to show how much I can do, and it gives me a lot of confidence moving forward that there’s a lot of room for me to grow within this game, and a lot of things I can do that, honestly, not many people know I can do.”

Garza could be playing big minutes in Europe — where three of his cousins play professional basketball — but he chooses to be in the NBA. “My dream was always to play in the NBA,” he said. And everything he does here, whether he’s playing in games or not, is progress.

“I feel the best I’ve ever felt athletically, so even if I’m not playing, it’s almost like I’m treating these workouts like the offseason in terms of how hard I’m going and trying to improve myself,” he said.

“I feel like there are a lot of elements to my game that I never had before. So, I’m excited to show it when that opportunity comes.”

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