The Minnesota Timberwolves reached the Western Conference finals brimming with talent, trust and tenacity after staging the biggest Game 7 comeback since the NBA began tracking play-by-play data 28 years ago.
The Wolves trailed the Denver Nuggets by 15 points at halftime on Monday (AEST) and by 20 points just over a minute into the third quarter.
With the crowd rocking Ball Arena, the Timberwolves didn’t flinch. They doubled down on their dogged defence and roared back for the most monumental victory in the franchise’s 35-year history.
They did it behind a terrific transition game and an unwavering superstar in Anthony Edwards for a stunning 98-90 victory over the reigning NBA champions.
Edwards is an enigma. A 22-year-old 2020 first round draft pick who has captured the imagination of the basketball world during an enthralling playoff series, that has seen the youngster propel himself into being the face of the league, reminding many keen observers of Michael Jordan.
His dogged love for competition and endless viral clips across the season has garnered much attention, yet his performance in the playoffs so far has attracted comparisons to Jordan as his profile rises.
x.com, Edwards generated more than 100 million video views across the league’s social and digital platforms in the opening round of the playoffs.
He was only second to LeBron James and has also gained the most Instagram followers among players since the start of the playoffs. On top of that, Edwards finished the regular season as the seventh most viewed player on NBA social media pages.
Edwards averaged 27.7 points throughout the series against Denver, scoring 43 points in Game 1 and 44 in Game 5, when he warned a Nuggets locker room staffer that he’d be back.
“I told them, I said ‘I’ll see y’all motherf—–s for Game 7.'”
Even though he was 6-24 from the field in the game seven, Edwards’ presence on defence was a huge factor in the win, cancelling out the Nuggets’ Jamal Murray and recording a couple of crucial steals at pivotal moments in the match.
“I’ve never met a guy or been a teammate with a guy who believes more in himself than Anthony Edwards,” Mike Conley said on ‘Inside the NBA’, telling the popular TV show Edwards, reminds him of a “young Michael Jordan”.
According to US commentator Stephen A. Smith, Jordan also called Edwards “special” after his huge performance against Kevin Durant’s Phoenix Suns in game one of that series.
Edwards went on to lead the way as the Timberwolves swept the Suns 4-0, all while trash-talking his idol Durant throughout the series.
When asked about the Jordan comparisons, Edwards said he’s uncomfortable about it.
“I want it to stop,” Edwards told Fox Sports in the US. “He’s the greatest of all time. I can’t be compared to him.”
The Wolves will face the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday AEST on their home court.
The last time Minnesota made to the Western Conference Finals was 20 years ago, led by legendary centre Kevin Garnett. The Wolves lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in six games in 2004 and Garnett never made it back to the postseason before leaving for Boston, where he won an NBA title in 2008.
The Wolves would miss the playoffs 16 times in the next 17 years, making it only in 2018, when they lost in the first round to Houston.
Things began to turn around for the Timberwolves when they drafted Edwards No. 1 overall in 2020. They made it back to the postseason party the following year, losing to Memphis in Round 1.
After hiring head coach Chris Finch off Michael Malone’s staff in Denver, the Timberwolves hired away the Nuggets’ roster architect Tim Connelly, who built the Wolves explicitly to unseat his former team in Denver.
Connelly’s first major move was a bold get of Rudy Gobert that was as risky as it was unconventional — he sent five players and five picks to Utah for the star defender — but going big was no small part of this breakthrough season for the Timberwolves.
“I think when Tim Connelly made that trade, everybody was laughing at him like, ‘What is he doing?’ But he made a great team,” Nuggets center Nikola Jokic said as this series began.
Jokic and the defending NBA champions knew that well before losing their semifinal series in such humbling fashion to a team, like theirs, that was assembled largely at Connelly’s direction.
As Jokic noted, Connelly’s deep, versatile roster can adapt to any style, meet any challenge and, as Sunday night showed, overcome the longest of odds.
The Timberwolves’ resolve was hardened a year ago when they lurched into the playoffs with a short-handed team that was quickly dispatched by Denver in five games in Round 1.
Fuelled by that disappointment, the Wolves won 56 games this year, produced the league’s top defence and led the Western Conference for most of the season before finishing a game behind Oklahoma City and Denver for the No.3 seed.
The Wolves made sure seeding didn’t matter.
After their four-game dispatch of the Phoenix Suns that marked their first playoff sweep in franchise history, the Wolves were unfazed by the Nuggets’ 20-5 record in the playoffs over the last two years or by their Western Conference-best 36-8 record at home this season.
The Wolves won three times in four games at Ball Arena. They took Games 1 and 2 in Denver before losing three in a row. Facing elimination, they recovered with a 115-70 demolition of the Nuggets in Game 6, the biggest win over a defending champion in NBA history.
And they followed up that win with an epic Game 7 comeback.
“The series was wild and this game was just a microcosm of the entire series,” Finch said.
In game seven, Edwards finished with 16 points, eight rebounds and seven assists with most of his contributions coming in Minnesota’s surgical 60-37 second half that knocked out the Nuggets.
The NBA now has a bonafide young star it can hang its hat on, in the midst of its most popular stars hitting retirement age.
In Edwards the league is in good hands according to former teammate Patrick Beverley, who made made the Jordan comparison back in 2022.
“If I say this, I know you guys are going to look at me like I’m crazy and I’m going to put all that pressure on that kid,” Beverley told JJ Reddick on The Old Man and The Three podcast.
“But, I told him, ‘Man, you got a chance, man. You got a chance, brother, to be Michael Jordan. You really do. You really do.’
“I’ve been around a lot of them and the kid doesn’t indulge in anything negative — just all positivity, all video games. His talent level, his skill level, it’s crazy. He has a chance to be really special. Really special in this league.”