No one said it had to be pretty every game but the Brooklyn Nets will take it as they continue to roll. Winning 9 of their last 11 games, after a 110-105 win over the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves, the Nets remain in first place in the Eastern Conference at 16-6. They're now 1.5 games ahead of their next opponent, the Chicago Bulls, making the next game a bit of a showdown. But the young Wolves “junked” this game up and kept it very close.

Kevin Durant led led all scorers as usual with 30 points, rounding out a double-double adding 10 rebounds. KD gave his team a one point lead late in the fourth on a three-point play. Honestly, what can anyone do about a move like this? What an absolute nightmare cover.

“I know how important the fourth quarter is,” said KD. “Especially in a tight game. I was able to get to my spots in the fourth and knock some in.”

The Wolves are a surprise team this season. They entered Friday's contest with the 7th best defensive rating in the NBA, in a virtual tie with the Nets for that category. They're 11-12 but they've won 7 of their last 10, helped by the electric play of 20 year-old sensation Anthony Edwards, who had 19 points in this one. And did stuff like this…

The Wolves were missing their best player in Karl-Anthony Towns. KAT took a scary fall Wednesday on a jam versus the Washington Wizards and hurt his tailbone. The former Wildcat's X-rays were negative but his absence left Minnesota at quite the disadvantage facing Durant and James Harden on the road.

But dealing with a rather healthy talent disparity, T-Wolves coach Chris Finch, quietly making a name for himself around the league, mucked the game up with some creative ugliness. The Wolves aggressively doubled off of the Nets non-shooters (e.g. DeAndre' Bembry, Bruce Brown, and others). They also committed a fair amount of fouls. The Wolves entered the game committing the most personal fouls per game as a team with 23.1. In this one they eclipsed their average committing a total of 25 personals.

The Nets followed suit and committed a staggering 31 of their own in a game some found well…aesthetically unappealing.

James Harden was asked what the Nets can learn as a team from this one, a win albeit not a pretty one.

“Uh nothing, honestly they played just a crazy scramble, double-team, triple-team defense,” said the 13-year vet and future Hall-of-Famer. Harden had 20 points to go with 7 boards and 9 assists. He was in attack mode and finished 12 of 15 from the line.  “Ugly but we'll take the win,” continued The Beard. “It's gonna be a lot of those games throughout the course of the year where it's not pretty it's not ideal but you'll take it…. Forget about it, prepare for tomorrow.”

The Nets were an unsightly 6 of 23 from downtown. A product of the Wolves strategy to contest the great shooters and leave open the not-so-great shooters. They had 17 turnovers, one less than Minnesota. Like Harden said, it was ugly.

Durant tipped his cap to the Timberwolves strategy of running some exotic blitzes to slow down the Nets.

“When you're playing against a team who's missing their best player [in Karl-Anthony Towns],” said Durant, “you stay in the game by making 3s and throwing in junk, exotic defenses and I felt like they did a good job of any given possession might throw zone, or box-and-1 or a hard double at half, so they're trying to muck it up and stay in the game and you gotta appreciate that and respect that as an opponent,” said Durant.

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Head coach Steve Nash echoed the sentiment expressed by his top stars.

“Obviously it wasn't a masterpiece,” said Nash. “we struggled and they lead the league in fouls they foul a lot they mucked off of some of our non-shooters and junked up the game and did a really good job of it. We struggle to get off the ball quickly, make quick decisions and it fed into their game plan,” said Nash.

As well as Durant and the Nets are playing, they'll probably see some of these exotic, zone or muck-it-up-and-foul-a-lot defenses. After they beat the New York Knicks recently, Durant credited their coach Tom Thibodeau for deploying some unpredictable looks as well.

Clearly teams don't want to allow KD and Harden to get too comfortable. By playoff time, they may well have seen it all. And that's not a bad thing.

Now they'll prepare to host the second place Bulls led by Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan without much rest. It's a copycat league and Bulls coach Billy Donovan may be curious to see if he can't muck things up a bit for Brooklyn too.