Breaking down the final two minutes of Thunder-Timberwolves
By Jeff Siegel
The NBA delivered its most exciting game of the young season last night when the Minnesota Timberwolves went into Oklahoma City, featuring a staggering 20 points scored by both teams in the last two minutes of the game. It all culminated in Andrew Wiggins pulling up from 30 feet to bank in the game-winner. The tactical decisions back and forth between Tom Thibodeau and Billy Donovan were immensely important down the stretch, as well as the execution of the players on the floor.
We’ll pick the game up with 1:50 left in the fourth quarter, just after Steven Adams had finished an and-one to bring the Thunder within one point and force a timeout from Thibodeau.
The sidelines out of bounds play out of the timeout was AI Hammer, the same set the Timberwolves loved to run in clutch situations last season (and one I outlined in our season preview series).
Butler inbounded the ball to Jeff Teague at the top of the key, who looked for Wiggins making his Iverson cut across the court to the opposite side. As Wiggins made his move, Taj Gibson set the hammer screen for Butler. Carmelo Anthony helped off Gibson in the lane, opening up a brief window for Wiggins to get the ball to Butler in the corner, but Wiggins had other ideas, executing another one of his beautiful spin moves in the lane to get the layup.
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It’s worth noting that Andre Roberson, Oklahoma City’s best defensive player and perhaps the second-best perimeter defender in the league, was on the bench for this play. While the Thunder went offense-defense with their substitutions later in the game, this point was too early to insert Roberson into the action. A key rule change last season limited each team to two timeouts in the last two minutes of games, down from the previously allowed three. This impacts the flow of the game significantly, eliminating two stoppages down the stretch of close games, but also impacts the value of one-way players like Roberson, as the Thunder had one fewer timeout to play that offense-defense substitution game with someone like Roberson, a defensive superstar and offensive liability, and Alex Abrines, an offensive stud and defensive sieve. Instead, the Thunder opted to go with Raymond Felton, who splits the difference between Roberson and Abrines by being merely average on both ends.
Wiggins’ finish put the Timberwolves up by three, a lead they maintained after Paul George missed an open 3-pointer (an unfortunate theme in this game for him) off good drive-and-kick action from Oklahoma City:
George struggled throughout last night’s game, finishing just 6-for-20 from the field and 1-for-8 on 3-pointer. To be fair to him, he was tasked with guarding Jimmy Butler much of the night, which will certainly take the wind out of anybody’s sails.
The only poor possession from either team in these last two minutes followed George’s missed 3, as Minnesota didn’t get any offense going until 11 seconds were left on the shot clock and Wiggins threw up an ugly turnaround jumper that misses everything, which gave the ball back to Oklahoma City on a shot clock violation:
The Thunder take the first of their final two timeouts after the turnover to set up their offense on a key possession. Felton remains in the game, as it’s still too early to go to offense-defense with Abrines and Roberson. Oklahoma City runs Ram Spain out of the timeout, a twist of one of the most popular sets run by teams across the league today:
George begins the play with a ram screen for Adams, who moves into a flat ball screen for Russell Westbrook. George then turns around and sets a back screen on Karl-Anthony Towns, Adams’ defender, to open up the lane for Westbrook to finish. In other iterations of this play, Westbrook can hit Adams rolling to the rim (who is open due to that back screen by George), or kick out to George at the 3-point line if the defense collapses into the paint.
On the other end of the court, Wiggins continues his late-game brilliance, following up a Gibson miss with a put back dunk to restore the Minnesota lead to three:
Westbrook is guarding Wiggins since Roberson is not yet in the game to take over that responsibility, so the Timberwolves go to Wiggins against the smaller Westbrook, then run a quick pick-and-roll with Towns, drawing the defense into the paint. Wiggins, whose ball-handling and passing is noticeably improved over previous seasons, finds Gibson for an open jumper. Gibson misses, but the process for Minnesota is good, and they were no worse for wear anyway since Wiggins was basically superhuman down the stretch of this game and dunked back Gibson’s miss.
Westbrook brings the ball back down and nails a 3-pointer, his third in the fourth quarter and fifth for the game:
Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — Oklahoma City ran the exact same Ram Spain action that had gotten them a basket on the previous possession. One of the main benefits of Adams setting a flat screen, in which his feet are parallel to the baseline rather than perpendicular, is that Westbrook can go either direction. Adams can shift his screen at the last moment to the side Westbrook chooses. In this instance, Butler jumped to his right, taking away Westbrook’s drive to the left, so Adams adjusted accordingly to open up Westbrook’s right hand. Towns laid back just a half-step too far and Westbrook hit the 3-pointer, tying the game at 110 with 29.4 seconds left.
Minnesota counters with their final timeout and it was finally time for both teams to play the offense-defense game — the Timberwolves brought in Jamal Crawford for Gibson for his offense and Oklahoma City dusted off Roberson for Felton. Minnesota didn’t do anything fancy on the possession following the timeout; they inbounded to Wiggins and ran a pick-and-roll with him and Towns. Wiggins drove, kicked to Butler in the strong-side corner, who drove and kicked to Towns, who drove and put in a floater to re-establish Minnesota’s lead.
Plays like this show the immense benefit of having a team with three offensive stars. All three of Wiggins, Butler, and Towns are able to put the ball on the floor and draw the defense inward before kicking back out for a better opportunity. Both Wiggins and Butler do this in the above clip, which stretched the Thunder defense to its limits and unlocked the pump-fake-and-drive for Towns. Beyond the incredibly tough shot Towns hit, the fact that he cleared out from underneath the rim after rolling was vital. A lot of big guys would want to be down there for an offensive rebounding opportunity in case Butler pulled up and missed, but Towns vacates the paint to give Butler another option. Adams doesn’t quite follow him, opting to stay under the rim for the rebound and is late on the close out, allowing Towns to get past him.
The Thunder then use their last timeout to set up their final possession, in which Abrines substituted in for Roberson. The entire world expected the ball to go to Westbrook and Oklahoma City used that to their advantage. Westbrook takes the ball from George at the top of the key and does something extremely simple — he drives right at Gibson and hands the ball to Anthony, who bangs it home from deep:
There’s nothing exceedingly complicated about what Oklahoma City did here. After the ball is inbounded to Westbrook, he fakes a handoff to George and the drives right at Gibson, not looking for an opening toward the rim but just walling off the Minnesota big man from deterring Anthony’s shot. Westbrook even goes so far as to turn his body to essentially box out Gibson from being able to get any closer to Anthony. While that’s probably against the absolute letter of the law regarding screens, there’s very little chance that a referee would blow the whistle against Westbrook in that situation.
Anthony’s 3-pointer put the Thunder up one, but their lead wasn’t to last, as Wiggins caroms the ball off the backboard and in to win the game for Minnesota. Whether he called bank or not doesn’t matter at this point — three points is three points and the Timberwolves walked away with the win.
Minnesota clearly worked on a full-court play like this in training camp. Wiggins and Teague split from one another in the back court, while Towns stood at the logo at midcourt to set a wicked back screen on whomever defended the ball. George was the victim on the final play last night as he fell on the Towns screen and forced Adams and the helping Abrines to contest Wiggins’ final shot.
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Neither offense deserved to lose this game. The teams combined to shoot 7-for-10 in the final 1:50 of the game, with both sides throwing haymakers back and forth. It’s still very early in the season and this is just one game in which both sides had multiple offensive stars, but for two teams that will hang their hat on the defensive end of the floor, the resulting flurry of points in the final two minutes has to be somewhat concerning. Oklahoma City finished second in the league in net rating in clutch situations last year on the back of their awesome defensive unit and Westbrook’s brilliance, but when it came time to get stops against the Timberwolves, the Thunder fell short.
Ditto for the other end — Thibodeau prides himself on his teams’ defensive acumen but had very little answer for Oklahoma City’s attack. Both teams will fare better defensively against lesser opposition and are integrating new pieces just a few games into the season, so it’s not worth worrying about quite yet, but it was noticeable as the ball continued to go into the basket for both teams.