One of the great things about basketball is the tension between the potential impact of a great individual player, and the fundamental reality that each team gets to play five at a time, meaning that it’s really the sum of the parts that matters most. Sometimes we focus too much on a star player, things get oversimplified, and we lose sight of too many important factors that swung the outcome. Other times we fixate on data minutiae that’s more complex, but misleading, and we lose the forest from the trees.
After last night’s Game 3 at Target Center, I don’t think it’s oversimplifying to say that the Spurs beat the Wolves, and will probably win this series, because they have Victor Wembanyama and we don’t.
Like almost all of these God forsaken Western Conference Playoff games, Game 3 tipped off at almost 9:00 central time. Friday night, pregrame drinking, etc etc the crowd was ready for war when things finally got underway.
Unfortunately, so was Wemby.
In the pregame, Finch suggested that his team’s struggles in Game 2 were resulting from poor spacing to assist Anthony Edwards when he was double teamed. In Game 3, Ant returned to the starting lineup, and in the first 6+ minutes of action, his team did not make a single shot from the field. Wemby was all over the place deterring or just straight blocking shots, and it wasn’t until he sat down with 5:33 to go in the first that Rudy Gobert finally tipped in somebody’s miss to get a 2-point shot on the books for the home team, and up their point total to 3.
The Wolves then found an immediate groove with Wemby on the bench, and managed to 22 by the end of the quarter, 21 of those coming after the Frenchman first checked out.
The middle of this game was close, competitive basketball. The Wolves hit buzzer-beater threes to finish both the first and second quarters, lighting the arena on fire. It quickly became apparent that Mike Conley was no longer a viable option against the Spurs suffocating brand of defense, and Finch shortened his rotation to seven. All seven competed well. The Wolves team defense was as locked in as we’ve seen it this year, with even TJ Shannon and Naz Reid playing well on that end. Ant played responsibly, and converted a bunch of star shots. The Spurs came out of halftime very sharp offensively, and yet the Wolves countered almost all of their punches with Naz or Ayo buckets, and kept the game extremely close until Winning Time arrived.
And that’s when Wemby dominated again, and this time as a scorer. The crucial sequence came after a timeout with 4 minutes to go. The Spurs drew up a play for Wemby to iso against Rudy, and he converted a short jumper like it was not much trouble at all. When Naz immediately countered with a trey to cut it to 3, Wemby came right back down, and flared of a screen to lose Rudy and splashed a trey to put the Spurs back up by 6 with just 3 minutes to go. That was too much to overcome.
Wemby finished the game with 39 points on 13-18 shooting, 15 rebounds, 5 blocks, and countless “never mind’s” where Wolves players opted against having their shot blocked, and did something else with the ball. After the game, he talked to the Prime postgame crew about the “heat in his heart.” None of this seems fair.
I’ve probably attended 300 or more games at Target Center in my life, I don’t know that I’ve seen a more dominant individual performance than that one. If there have been some (KG Game 7 versus Sacramento would be every Wolves fan’s retort, as it should be – I wasn’t in the house for that one) the list can’t be long.
When in the middle of the game the Wolves were competing at their best, the formula against Wemby was essentially:
- Drive past a really good perimeter defender.
- Encounter Wemby.
- Try not to panic.
- Jump, turn, and whip a pass somewhere you’re hoping a teammate might be.
- Teammate jumps to catch said pass.
- That guy then has to pass it again immediately.
- Finally, assuming a turnover didn’t happen, take the shot and do it with confidence.
It’s exhausting, and these terms are not favorable to the Timberwolves in this series. In Game 3 the Wolves needed an A+ performance to win, and they came up with an admirable but insufficient A-.
The Spurs have a Wemby, the Timberwolves do not, and as long as those two things are true, that is probably the beginning and end of this analysis.
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