Every NBA fan views the game through his own lens, and organizes the experience to her own preferences and desires. Some have season tickets and attend the actual event; some subscribe to League Pass and watch as much ball as they can from the couch; some wager next month’s rent on prop bets and follow the action on their phone; and some start up WordPress blogs and hope to get a seat near Sid Hartman on press row.
It’s a big-money industry with pressure to win. That’s the job of the front office, the coaching staff, and the players. Try as we might, us fans have no control over the outcomes. Understanding that reality is the first step toward maximizing the enjoyment you might get out of investing your precious time in following a pro basketball team, including and perhaps especially one with a history like that of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
When Patrick and I launched this site in December 2011 (before that season, which you might recall had a delayed start due to a lockout) the Wolves were fresh off of a 17-win campaign, which was preceded by one with just 15 wins. (Eds note: Thanks Rambis!) If the name “Punch-Drunk Wolves” has a negative connotation, perhaps that is owed to all of the losing that the team was doing when we first started writing about it. But that doesn’t fully explain it either. I just remember us emailing lists of possible site names, and one of us threw PDW in there, partly inspired by the Paul Thomas Anderson film “Punch-Drunk Love.” Google’s A.I. Overview of punch-drunk’s definition includes the Adam Sandler flick as a cultural reference, describing it as “depicting a character overwhelmed and socially confused.” I don’t know if that described the Timberwolves at that time, or ourselves managing life after college, but it seemed like the perfect name for the site.
I think more than anything we wanted to organize our experience of being diehard Wolves fans, and writing in ways that were both serious in substance but oftentimes irreverent in form was a great way to do it.
The prompt for thinking back on the site name comes out of Jon Krawczynski’s latest for The Athletic, “The sound and the fury of Jaden McDaniels and the Minnesota Timberwolves.” In capturing the vibe and energy of the Wolves Game 6 close-out victory and a raucous Target Center crowd, Jon detailed how the injured Donte DiVincenzo “watched some of the game from a suite high above the court, better to protect his casted foot. But as his Wolves kept throwing haymakers at the punch drunk Nuggets, he couldn’t help but wheel himself down to the sideline to be with his teammates, to revel in the triumph that he inspired.” (Emphasis mine.)
For some reason seeing the punch-drunk label attached to any other team, but especially one as successful as the Nuggets have been, jolted me for a moment, and put things in some new perspective.
While Timberwolves success is no longer new or fresh — this season marks the team’s fifth straight playoff appearance, and prevailing over Denver marks the fifth playoff series win in the past three years — the circumstances surrounding this moment feel like the cementing of an era that will forever be looked back on fondly. They beat the Nuggets again, and this time they did it because Rudy Gobert largely won his matchup against The Joker. Jaden McDaniels shared his locally-loved persona of “idiosyncratic shit talker supreme” with the world, and suddenly became the coolest thing in basketball. Ant’s injury caused huge adversity while Donte’s caused downright sadness. Ayo emerged as a capable hero, only to join those guys on the injury shelf with a sore calf muscle. Down their top three backcourt players, they just dug deeper down the depth chart, deeper into their collective heart, and Next Man Up’d a Game 6 win to knock the Denver Nuggets out of the postseason once again.
I can make a lot of excuses for why I don’t write as often as I used to, but one reason that I think is real is that I’ve said so much by now that eventually it just feels like I’m repeating myself. I’m sure to some extent professional writers encounter some form of that type of writer’s block, but my life in basketball was pretty immersive and all-consuming up through college. When this site started, I had a mental bank of memories, thoughts, and beliefs that were easy to spill over onto blog posts when processing Wolves games. Fresh observations are less common with age, I guess.
There’s a lot happening at once with the Wolves right now, however, so here are some fresh takes, in no particular order of importance:
Okay this first one is actually repeating myself, and beating a dead horse, but Jaylen Clark really has to play in these playoff games. It’s unfortunate that it required a billion injuries for Finch to play Clark in a planned part of the rotation, but in Game 6 his impact was pretty obvious to anybody watching. He’s the best pressure defender on the team, a physical force that can help dictate the terms of movement and flow while he’s on the floor. That might mean full-court pressing defense, bopping opponent’s bodies around screens or on the boards, or – if the circumstances require – grabbing a 3x MVP by the shirt and starting a mini brawl. For a team that thrives most with a chip on its shoulder and feistiness in its mien, Clark should be a regular rotation player. Chris Finch himself said earlier this season that Clark was “the personality of our defense.” Well said, Coach, but put the words into action and give this guy minutes for every game of the Spurs series. There are only so many ways a team can set the tone to its liking, and Clark is one at Finch’s disposal. He’s just gotta embrace it.
More on Finch. Is he a great coach, or a terrible coach? Both opinions can be found rather easily if you live in a world that spans podcasts and Twitter replies. It is undeniable by now that Finch is a good, if not great, playoff coach. It might be almost as undeniable, however, that as a regular season coach Finch has flaws, and leaves important wins on the table. In an NBA that is increasingly bifurcated between a regular season few seem to care about, and a playoffs that is arguably the best entertainment in all of sports, Finch’s strength finds itself on the ideal side of the ledger. Two seasons ago, his Wolves ripped through a star-studded Suns team, then shocked the world by upsetting a Nuggets team that was at the time destined for dynasty-level success. Last year, despite the disappointing 49-win regular season, Finch rallied the troops to exact revenge on Luka Doncic in Round 1, and exact a form of Wolves Franchise revenge on Jimmy Butler in Round 2. This year, with this stunning second playoffs upset of the Nuggets, with so many brutal injuries, Finch can really strut around as a Guy Who Wins When It Counts. I didn’t love his post-game-6 “THEY CHOSE US!” talking point, as that seemed better suited for pregame motivation than postgame rubbing it in. (Eds note: if Denver’s coaching staff made any comments about the Wolves that I’m missing, I’d reconsider that take — it seemed to me like an odd form of anger from Finch in a moment that should’ve been fully celebratory.)
There are a couple ways to gently push back against excessive Finch celebration right now, however. For one thing, if Kyle Anderson was not sick during Game 6, Finch one-million-percent would’ve given him a real rotation spot, and there’s a decent chance that would’ve swung the outcome the other way. Finch was literally forced to play Clark, and not play Kyle, and the Wolves were able to be dynamic and forceful for essentially the entire game. He was saved from himself, in other words. (Eds note: In another past playoffs instance of “Finch lucked into it,” one might point to the epic Game 2 of the 2024 Nuggets series, when Rudy sat out to be with his newborn child. The Wolves shocked Denver that night with a smaller and faster group that played full-court pressure defense. It would not have been sustainable over a full playoff series, but it was the sort of mid-series chess move that underdogs play, and it worked spectacularly well…. and was dictated not by Finch’s preferences, but by Gobert’s personal life priorities.) For another thing, I think an absolutely enormous takeaway from the Game 6 victory, minus Ant, Donte, and Ayo, is that THIS ROSTER IS LOADED. Terrance Shannon Jr. was thrust into the starting lineup, and not in a complementary role but a “lead guard” one. In Winning Time, the offense was “everybody clear out for TJ.” After a disastrous regular season, Shannon seamlessly rose to this challenge with 24 points and competent playoff-caliber defense. Clark, who had a better regular season than Shannon but likewise found himself on the end of the bench as Finch got his Slow Mo back, likewise looked every bit the part of Big Game Player, in Game 6.
Zach Lowe sometimes emphasizes just how loaded the Wolves roster is “one through seven.” That’s Donte, Ant, Jaden, Julius, Rudy, Naz, and Ayo. It’s pretty clear, however, that the team’s depth runs deeper than that, and this team (which was quite healthy over the course of the season, in a league where injuries run rampant) should’ve won 55 or more games, this season. Finch leans too heavily on trusted veterans, he grants freedom and long leashes to those players who too often abuse their privileges. Eager guys on the fringe of the rotation lose their spot if two too many corner threes clank off the iron, or they get burned on a backdoor cut. I realize that playing time allocation is a paramount challenge for any basketball coach, but around the NBA teams are being innovative about leveraging roster depth to maximize nightly intensity while preserving health for the playoffs. Finch’s Wolves brag about playing all 82 games, but too many of those are played at a pace of a marathon jogger, instead of a sprinter. We see in these playoffs just how big of a switch they have to flip, and that is both a testament to their ability, and damning of their consistency throughout the course of the season. Championships are not won on the heels of a 49-win season. Enough things had to go wrong to lose 33 times that you’re not built for 4 full rounds to follow.
That’s enough on that, because it sounds more critical of Finch than I mean to be. It’s just that in the narrative roller coaster, his stock is peaking right now, and it is worth acknowledging that as the playoff success comes with players people have never heard of, it suggests things were not well managed in the lead-up.
These tweets capture what’s good and what’s missing from the Wolves as presently constructed. They have a very strong roster. They have elite defenders, in Jaden and especially Rudy. When that defense is fully engaged and activated, and when that defense is not compromised by either careless or stagnant offense (both are harmful to the defense — see: Luka Doncic’s performance in the ’24 conference finals when he was allowed to rest on defense the whole series) it makes the Wolves a dangerous, borderline-elite basketball team. Self perception matters collectively as much as individually in basketball, and it seems like when the Wolves grasp where their strength lies (we know it when we see it, and it involves bodies flying around, and then moving faster up the court offensively) they can hang with anybody. An x’s and o’s explanation for why they’ve suffered in this area has been the age depreciation of Mike Conley as Point Guard Organizer Guy. In 2024 when Conley still had juice to his game, the offense was reasonably intelligent and the defense was spectacular. Last year Father Time began knocking on Mike’s door, and the Wolves became a sloppier, less consistent team.
But the sides of the floor are connected, and the Wolves roster (with or without Ant in the lineup) is designed such that the defense sets the tone, and the offense doesn’t fuck it up. Also, in this age of heliocentric hyperskilled playmakers, it’s vital that every opposing player be forced to exert energy on both ends of the floor. The Wolves did that versus Jokic in Round 1, just as they did last year to Luka, and just as they did not to Luka the year before, when they lost to Dallas. You can’t let anyone off the hook.
Okay, that’s it for now. The Spurs are deservedly heavy favorites in Round 2. Wemby will be very hard to score against in the halfcourt. The Wolves just need to remember what got them here (defense), and allow that to generate as much transition and flow on offense as might be attainable.
Go Wolves.
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