The Minnesota Timberwolves looked sluggish in the first half of their Game 3 win against the Golden State Warriors Saturday night. Julius Randle had 13 points in the first two frames to keep the Wolves afloat, but but he didn’t get much help from anyone else, which led to a two-point lead at the half for the Warriors, who were playing without offensive focal point Stephen Curry.
Midway through the third quarter it was much of the same for the Wolves, who found themselves playing from behind still, but were within enough striking distance to turn this game on its head.
That’s where Anthony Edwards comes in.
He had just eight points at halftime, and struggled through the first half of the third quarter, but then he scored eight straight points for Minnesota, the last of which put the Wolves back in the lead.
Edwards put up 15 of his 36 points in the third quarter, none more electrifying than a posterizing dunk over Warriors’ big man Kevon Looney with just a minute to go in the quarter.
“It doesn’t surprise me anymore when I see his spectacular plays,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said of Edwards’ dunk. “It just infuses our group with so much energy. He kind of gets going too, and we really need that from him. He’s been working hard on finishing, he knows that there’s opportunities to get to the rim against these guys with their lack of size at times, and he’s been on himself to finish better. That was kind of, I think, his message to himself.”
That production carried over into the fourth quarter, when Edwards just continued to increase the level of difficulty on his shots. The two quarters were also the perfect representation of how versatile Edwards is offensively. In the third quarter, he used his athleticism and strength to get to the rim and finish acrobatic layups, taking advantage of the Warriors’ lack of rim protection. Of the 10 shots he attempted in the third quarter, only three of them were outside the paint.
Edwards became an off-ball threat, using opportunities where his defender was caught sleeping to cut to the rim for tough finishes.
He got downhill using his quick burst of speed and stopped on a dime to pull up for a floater.
And he took defenders one-on-one, using a deadly first step to get someone like Jimmy Butler on his hip, then turned loose to the rim.
“It’s kind of crazy because teams don’t usually want me to get to the hole. Now they don’t want me to shoot 3s, step-back 3s. Just trying to find that balance, man,” Edwards said after the win. “Like Mike [Conley] say, not being thirsty all the time. Setting screens, finding my teammates, getting it through actions. I think just playing off the ball is better for me playing versus this team because everyone is locked in on the game plan. They’ve got a pretty good group of guys that’s locked in on the game plan. They’re a championship team, and they don’t make too many game plan mistakes.”
The third quarter showed how dangerous Edwards is in getting to the basket, which we already knew. But in the fourth quarter, he spread the defense out and hit several difficult 3-pointers to cut into Golden State’s lead:
… and eventually get his team back out in front for good.
“I like the way he started [the game],” Finch said. “I thought he was aggressive and doing the right things. The first half, when he was putting the ball on the deck, he was drawing such a crowd we were actually able to find some cleaner looks. But he really got himself going with the dunk. We needed to spread the floor for him a bit more. He needed to just go downhill. I thought there was, again, too much traffic around him at times, and we just needed to kind of open up the floor for him.”
Even against a shorthanded Warriors team, the Timberwolves needed Edwards to take this game over in order to win. It’s obviously not the situation Minnesota wanted to be in, with this game being so back-and-forth for most of the night, but knowing you have someone like Edwards who can flip a switch when needed is certainly a luxury the Wolves are lucky to have.
This news was originally published on this post .
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