The Minnesota Timberwolves are finally on the board in the Western Conference Finals.
After two brutal losses to open up the series, the Minnesota Timberwolves rose to the occasion, retaliating against the Oklahoma City Thunder with a dominant 143-101 win in Game 3.
Limiting OKC to their worst game of the entire season, Anthony Edwards dropped a major statement as the Minnesota superstar scored 30 points, also adding nine rebounds, and six assists.
Meanwhile, Julius Randle successfully bounced back from his nightmare Game 2, finishing with a strong 24-point performance.
One of the keys to the Timberwolves turnaround was a defensive masterclass, limiting the Thunder to just 101 points in an inefficient 40.7 percent field goal line (31.8 percent from threes).
For Anthony Edwards, it’s simply all credit to Jaden McDaniels, who showed why voters made the wrong decision not to vote him in this season’s All-Defensive Teams.
“It starts with Jaden McDaniels,” Edwards said in postgame about Minnesota’s elite Game 3 defense.
“He didn’t make an All-Defensive team, which is crazy, that’s on the people who vote.
“But tonight, he showed again why he should be on it. We just follow his lead on defense.
“If he comes out pressuring the ball, we all follow suit. We go as he goes on the defensive end.”
After making it to last year’s All-Defensive Second Team, McDaniels came up short this time around, being ranked 16th in overall voting.
The snub came despite him averaging a career-best 1.3 steals with 0.9 blocks. He also played for the entire 82-game season for Minnesota, fully embracing the role of being their perimeter defensive stalwart that contributed to the team’s top-six defense league-wide.
Beyond his 10-point display in Game 3, he helped to slow down Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to just 14 points from 4-13 shooting.
He also did not fall to the polarizing free-throw tactics of the MVP. The Thunder superstar only had four trips to the line after a staggering 29 in the first two games of the series.
Being omitted from the NBA’s All-Defensive Team can only serve as fuel for McDaniels to help the Timberwolves’ quest to defeat the Thunder and advance to the NBA Finals.
