The Minnesota Timberwolves season came to a crushing end in the Western Conference Finals, as they were thoroughly outplayed by the Dallas Mavericks, resulting in them losing in five games. While it was undoubtedly an extremely encouraging campaign for the Timberwolves, it was a tough pill for the team and their fans to swallow, especially after they rallied to eliminate the defending champion Denver Nuggets the round before.
Early in the season, the Timberwolves established themselves as one of the biggest surprises in the NBA. Anthony Edwards took a superstar turn, and he received strong supporting play from Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert in the frontcourt. Add in a bevy of talented depth players, with guys like Jaden McDaniels, Mike Conley, and Naz Reid, and it's easy to see why Minnesota was winning so many games.
They met their match in Dallas, though, as their offense struggled to consistently support Edwards throughout the course of the five game series. So with their season officially in the books, let's take a quick look back at their loss to the Mavs and pick out a few players whose struggles played a big role in their team's season coming to an end.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker
Nickeil Alexander-Walker fits the ball as one of those aforementioned depth pieces who helped make Minnesota so good. Alexander-Walker is a versatile wing defender who can space the floor as a three-point shooter, and he put together a strong regular season campaign for the Timberwolves (8 PPG, 2.5 APG, 2 RPG, 43.9 FG%, 39.1 3P%).
Against Dallas, though, Alexander-Walker struggled to get much of anything going. Rotations shrink in the playoffs, and Chris Finch and company were hoping he could fill the eighth spot in their rotation. The problem was that NAW wasn't doing much of anything when he was on the floor (3.4 PPG, 1.6 APG, 1.2 RPG, 28.6 FG%, 18.8 3P%), which almost forced Minnesota to rely solely on seven players in this series.
Alexander-Walker didn't shoot the ball much, and when he did, it typically wasn't finding the bottom of the bucket, which was particularly crushing after he played well against both the Nuggets and Phoenix Suns earlier in the postseason. He's not the main reason Minnesota lost this series, but you need everyone to chip in if you want to win a championship, and unfortunately, Alexander-Walker didn't hold up his end of the bargain.
Rudy Gobert
Rudy Gobert is always a lightning-rod for criticism, and that was no different in this series against the Mavericks. If there was one area where the Timberwolves were expected to dominate the Mavs, it was on the interior, thanks to their star big man duo of Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns (more on him in a second). Instead, both of these guys got dominated throughout the series.
On the surface, Gobert's per game numbers aren't awful (11.8 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 1.4 APG, 62.9 FG%), but a closer look shows how his impact was waning. Gobert struggled to rebound the ball throughout this series, forcing Edwards and Towns to take up a bigger role in that department. He also didn't make much of an impact in the paint on defense, as he averaged an uncharacteristically low 0.8 blocks per game through the five games.
Of course, Gobert was getting pulled out of the paint onto mismatches against Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving more often than he would have liked, and when he was on the perimeter, Gobert was getting torched (see Doncic's game-winner in Game 2.) Gobert's impact wasn't what it needed to be in this one, and it was a frustrating way to see his solid season with Minnesota come to an end this way.
Karl-Anthony Towns
While Minnesota was blown out in Game 5, they lost each of the first three games of this series by single digits, so it wasn't as if the gap between these two teams was massive. With that in mind, there's no doubt that the guy most to blame for this series loss was Karl-Anthony Towns, who put together the worst playoff series of his career.
Towns was in the position to win the Timberwolves this series. The Mavericks were giving Edwards tons of attention, but he still managed to average 24.6 points per game on 43 percent shooting from the floor. Towns was being left at the perimeter to do his thing, and for the most part, he was getting the ball with open looks. As his numbers show, though, Towns simply couldn't hit anything (19.6 PPG, 8.4 RPG, 2.2 APG, 37.9 FG%, 24.2 3P%).
This was the worst possible time for Towns to go cold from the floor. While you can't blame one person for a series loss, there's a decent chance Minnesota is still playing basketball at the very least if Towns could have shot minimally better to open the series. There's no doubt he's a star, but there are going to be a lot of big questions surrounding KAT this offseason after his horrific performance to end the year.
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