Timberwolves show signs of wolf

Bill Walton trucks on

At what point in Game 4 do you think the Minnesota Timberwolves began to see the Dallas Mavericks as human?

At what point in Game 4 do we think the Minnesota Timberwolves began to see themselves as a bunch of freakin’ idiots? Down oh-three, to this?

This is why Game 5 is special. Dallas isn’t done growing yet, this team was only recently put together. The cool-with-itself Timberwolves believe in its edge and the Timberwolves should, because the Timberwolves have an edge, with surfaces unscratched. Yet if Dallas steps into what it knows it is capable of in Minnesota — cohesion not yet seen, accurate threes — the Mavs have a marvelous chance to blow Minnesota’s mind. To prove the Mavericks aren’t so human, after all.

The Timberwolves didn’t create doubt in Dallas, only encouragement for themselves. Anthony Edwards keeping the balance alive long enough for a second screen, Mike Conley spotting lanes his wheels can still spin through. Jaden McDaniels flickered in Game 4, with Luka Dončić barely paying attention to him, he’ll do more on Thursday. Kyle Anderson moves mountains, Naz Reid has a nose for these things, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (2-5 from deep in Game 4) is ready to splash after letting loose that lefty three-pointer in Game 3.

I need to embrace betting culture. Curating a Most Likely to Attempt Three-Pointers With Off-Hand-category before the playoffs is right up my alley. Four of the five top contenders (absent is Kelly Oubre’s inevitable right-handed three-pointer) play in this series.

Which is a series. Minnesota’s deficit is too deep to dig out of, especially for a group which can’t help but think about Game 6 and Game 7 before it even lines for Game 5. Yet Game 5 could turn into a Game 6 and beyond, because the Timberwolves turned Game 4 into yet another learning exercise, not a layover on the way toward some other sunny spot.

Teams don’t fly to the beach after the playoffs anyway, they fly back to the city they work out of to clean lockers and meet with bosses, teammates loitering all around you, asking if anyone has any extra empty shoe boxes to stuff mail into. Players don’t want to be around other players after sloughing off a Game 4.

So Minnesota showed up on Tuesday, showed us the team we’ve watched all season, the group we saw sparks from in 2022-23, an outfit with plenty of potential still on the table.

Edwards hasn’t made it easy on himself yet, he will only grow smoother as the series moves along. Karl-Anthony Towns already proved he could play through injury and intrigue, he finally found enough space to launch in Game 4. Other instances of growth as well: Luka Garza dismissed his head-rest/towel outfit for chunks of Game 4, soon he’ll learn he doesn’t have to pinch his nose when he enters the pool.

Dallas, of course, might end it in the stadium they’ve won in twice already, during days we can all remember, last Friday and last Wednesday. I’d eat leftovers from last Friday RIGHT NOW, just give me some knockoff Pam spray and one of those fake-copper pans and two to three minutes with your microwave. Why am I doing this in your apartment? To show you it can be done.

Maybe the Greatest Scoring Backcourt Ever doesn’t miss two-thirds its shots in Game 5, maybe the Mavs excise the Dwight Powell Lineup (-4 in three minutes in Game 4), maybe P.J. Washington works up something better than 3-13 from the floor. This is why dried red pepper flake is essential, P.J. Washington.

Minnesota, of course, put the Mavs there. Made Dončić (7-21 from the field in Game 4) uncomfortable, dragged Kyrie (6-18) into unfortunate angles. Nobody had to bench anyone, lineups didn’t switch severely. Minnesota, a young team, got better!

It’s too late. Minnesota isn’t completely out of chances, but the odds of a playoff team losing four consecutive games after winning three consecutive games against the same team are preposterously low in theory, and impossible in practice.

So far, at least. I’d always presumed the first 0-3 comeback in NBA history would stem from a gimmick, an injury or unrepresentative setback, maybe a superstar returning after missing his team’s initial three losses.

An outcome with caveats, sutured into someone like Ian Eagle’s future retellings, the lone exception is, of course, Detroit coming back to beat Philly in 2032 after dropping the first three games, that series as you know Grant featured the unfortunate hostage situation, not unlike the conceit of the film ‘Celtic Pride.’

I can’t presume the first 0-3 comeback will turn out of two teams at equal strength throwing winning streaks at each other. Are we watching something historic?

Game 5 won’t tell us, Game 6 won’t tell us, but I’d like to see it try.

WAVE THAT FLAG

I don’t like to look at Twitter during games, not even All-Star Games, though I didn’t have to look at Twitter during the 2024 All-Star Game to know it wasn’t going over. Another All-Star blowout, zero defense, relative highlights becoming rarer and rarer as the lobs droned on.

Endless alley-oops on an otherwise-horrid — snowy, sullen — February evening, sky losing its light hours before the contest tipped off. That stuff is important to me, daylight, I have depression and require lots of sunshine. It is no coincidence I fell in love with basketball, a winter sport, something to cling to through the coldest months.

So I don’t mind endless alley-oops. Missed behind-the-back passes. Crossover dribbles around All-Stars trying to get out of each other’s way, nobody wishing to risk a calf contusion ahead of Sunday evening’s flight to Cancún.

It was entertaining, I had fun. I could tell I was having fun because there I was, having fun. I could tell it was entertaining because Bill Walton was directly across from my press row seat, sitting courtside next to sourpuss Larry Bird, Walton smiling the entire time. Larry I can overlook, I could not take my eyes off Bill.

Walton wasn’t smiling because this was his role as NBA ambassador, with Walton wonderfully dutybound to relieve his hero Bill Russell as the NBA’s sideline cackler. He was laughing because it was fun, because All-Star Games are silly, because we’re in shorts indoors on a Sunday night, sweating like it isn’t snowing outside.

He was smiling for the same reason I was, I told myself, I confirmed, readying that column, Bill Walton’s fourth quarter smile on my side. I may never get to cover another All-Star Game in person, not without driving to a warm weather city, I’m going to smile through the 2024 version because this stuff is fleeting.

Bill Walton may have been smiling because he was sick, and he knew he may not get to smile through another All-Star Game. He may have been smiling because this stuff is fleeting. Smiling because nobody could know in 1978 — with Walton starting the NBA All-Star Game as the league’s reigning MVP and best player on the reigning champions, starting center on a 40-8 team — that the 1978 All-Star Game would be the only one Bill Walton ever played in.

And that game was silly, with no defense and sloppy ball-handling, and I bet the traffic snarled around the arena, and every player flew commercial back to their team’s practice the next night.

Bill Walton was, for many of us, our parents’ favorite player. Not merely their only counterculture representation in team sports, but an MVP, someone with a few titles to their credit, a lead dog with a few Cat Stevens albums in their collection.

When the Great Arlington Heights Flood of 1987 hit and my family had to drag my dad’s ruined Sports Illustrated back issues out of the sopping den and toward the edge of the driveway, my father loudly rued the loss of coverage of the Trail Blazers’ 1977 title run above any other flood-soaked damage. He probably mentioned Cheryl Tiegs.

The previous spring, in a much drier den, we’d spent evenings watching Walton on TBS and CBS, clasping hands with Celtic teammates while rarely leaving the bench. These playoff games were his last NBA moments, Walton missed all of 1987-88 and retired. Two years later, an injury suffered during a comeback attempt created the need for ankle fusion surgery, his career’s coup de grâce. Walton worked 468 NBA games. Kyle Kuzma’s played more than that.

Bill went square real quick, blue blazers at NBC, crossing closer to Bob Novak in his broadcast role as Chief Explainer, to on-air partner Steve Jones’ chuckling version of Tom Braden.

However, life loosened up exponentially in the early 2000s, maybe it was another Bush in office or Luke away at Arizona, it wasn’t until the new century when Bill started blaring the tie-dyed t-shirts again, mixing metaphors, calling for Coronas on air.

The irreverence he’d hint at alongside previous-generation types like Ralph Lawler and Marv Albert let loose alongside Gen X and younger, even hearty-humor guys like Mike Breen and Dave Pasch and Jason Benetti had no chance reining Walton in, and why not. Bill paid good money for the ability to sit upright, sometimes comfortably.

Walton’s was a mostly excruciating life. His best pre-internet clips to commit to VHS were brief, little snippets of extra passing in Boston, a banked-in running hook to dispatch the Rockets, pulling rebounds with Portland, every stretch appearing as if Bill landed on concrete frontcourts. Everyone else danced on gleaming hardwood, Bill lapped over chunks of rock, pebbles pinging against every metatarsal.

He turned sour late, in ways we all must avoid, not every lesson Walton let on was going to be toward his credit. By his own account this century was darker than the previous one, though Walton knew his role in this traveling show, anyone who ever exchanged a text or phone chat or in-person conversation with Walton will tell you Bill treated each isolated recipient, stranger or ESPN co-host, like a forever friend in spiritual lockstep, a songwriting partner he never should have broken up with.

These guys all idolized John Wayne before moving onto Jerry Garcia, I can contextualize the flaps long enough to appreciate what was nearly an impeccable spin. I mean, if you’re personally able to make the FBI angry in your lifetime, you’ve thrown down, big man.

He did what he set out to do. Watching Bill Walton made me want to go play basketball, the basketball Bill couldn’t.

To live in the high post and touch lookaway two-handers into what we now call “the dunker’s spot.” When I did it, those VHS days, it wasn’t to anyone who could dunk.

This is the strongest movement to create, with your art, in the same way Garcia’s runs made me want to figure out major keys when I was about the same age, knees creaking in from the concrete, switching from one thing I was OK at to another, switching to the middle pickup, hoping they’ll have the Maurice Lucas episode of Dan Patrick’s ‘NBA’s Greatest Games’ on, wishing we had another two years of summer left, not another two months. Why Bill Walton reminds me of 1996 is up for my meds to decide.

Garcia let everyone know he was dying, shaking legs at Soldier’s Field, low flame in a hotel room. Walton kept his fade to himself, sitting through that mess of an Indianapolis All-Star Game, giddier than anyone in the building outside Kelly Dwyer, both of us grinning like we’re watching them play Terrapin-era tunes in the shadows of pyramids. Maybe that’s how Walton thought about himself and Larry, taking place of Russell, one monument into another. You know, we live closer to the lives of Caesar and Cleopatra than we do the building of Bill Walton’s NBA career …

Make sure I’m smiling like that if I get to 71. If I’m not, pull up the Maurice Lucas episode of the NBA’s Greatest Games, the one where they show Walton’s Blazers. I’ll have it on VHS around here, somewhere.

MIDNIGHT MOONLIGHT

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