Golden State won the season series but hasn’t faced Minnesota since January — and never in the postseason.
Golden State won the season series but hasn’t faced Minnesota since January — and never in the postseason.
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Anthony Edwards eliminated one Team USA teammate already, and now the Timberwolves’ rising star will get his crack at another Olympic gold-medal winner after Stephen Curry and the Warriors took care of business — at last — against the Rockets.
With a 103-89 win Sunday in Game 7, Golden State advanced to the Western Conference semifinals, where they will face Edwards and Minnesota, which needed only five games to move past Luka Doncic, LeBron James and the third-seeded Los Angeles Lakers.
The series, which tips off Tuesday (6:30 p.m., TNT) at the Target Center in Minneapolis, pits the West’s No. 6 and No. 7 teams against each other, but the Dubs and Wolves would both say they ended the season playing better basketball than their seeding indicates.
Season series: GSW 3, MIN 1
107-90 MIN* (Dec. 6)
114-106 GSW (Dec. 8)
113-103 GSW* (Dec. 21)
116-115 GSW* (Jan. 15)
* = road win
The storyline: The Warriors have never faced the Timberwolves in the postseason and, more importantly, haven’t seen them at all since acquiring Jimmy Butler III.
Perhaps only Golden State had the trajectory of its season altered more than Minnesota in the time since.
While Butler propelled the Warriors into the league’s top defense and a 26-9 record with him in the lineup, Minnesota’s pick-and-roll combo of Edwards and Julius Randle has unlocked the league’s second-best offense and a 20-5 record (including the playoffs) since March 1.
For once, the Warriors can’t claim the best player in the series. That title belongs to the 23-year-old Edwards, who took a back seat to Curry and the old guard in Paris but, like it or not, has put himself in the conversation as the next face of the league.
He averaged 26.8 points, 8.4 rebounds and 6.2 assists while playing 41 minutes per game in Minnesota’s series against the Lakers. Edwards mostly kept the Timberwolves’ offensive machine rolling, averaging 117.5 points per 100 possessions after posting a 121.9 regular-season figure since March 1, second only to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
After a physical series against the Rockets, Golden State will also have to contend with the size of the Timberwolves, who start Randle (6-9, 250) alongside Rudy Gobert, the 7-foot-1 four-time defensive player of the year, and have Naz Reid (6-9, 264) coming off the bench.
Gobert, as Warriors fans may recall, is a longtime target of Draymond Green’s ire, including last season when Green put Gobert in a chokehold and drew a five-game suspension.
X factor: The Timberwolves will be operating not only with homecourt advantage but also with youth and four extra days of rest on their side.
Edwards may prove better equipped for the rigors of a playoff series than Curry (thumb) and Butler (back), who are 37 and 35 years old respectively and continue to nurse injuries. Curry logged 267 minutes in the seven-game slog against Houston — 45 in Game 7 — while Butler was forced to miss a game after taking a hard fall, as opposed to only 205 minutes of mileage in the first round on Edwards, who will go nearly a week between games.
The schedule
Game 1: Warriors at Timberwolves, Tuesday (6:30 p.m. PT, TNT)
Game 2: Warriors at Timberwolves, Thursday (5:30 p.m. PT, TNT)
Game 3: Timberwolves at Warriors, Saturday (time TBD, ABC)
Game 4: Timberwolves at Warriors, Monday (time TBD, ESPN)
Game 5: Warriors at Timberwolves, Wed. May 14 (time TBD, TNT)*
Game 6: Timberwolves at Warriors, Sun. May 18 (time TBD, tv TBD)*
Game 7: Warriors at Timberwolves, Tue. May 20 (5:30 p.m. PT, ESPN)*
*= if necessary