Timberwolves try to avoid the sweep Tuesday night in Dallas

The Minnesota Timberwolves are down to their last loss.

They have stumbled into a repeatable formula for defeat, dropping their third straight game to the Dallas Mavericks in a manner that dramatizes the difference in postseason experience and execution in the clutch between the top two scorers from each team.

The Mavericks’ Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving have been here before – playing for a chance to win a championship in the NBA Finals. The Wolves’ Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns have not. Dallas has transformed that simple fact into a probable death sentence for Minnesota’s 2023-24 season. There have been 154 previous occasions in NBA history where a team has lost three straight in a best-of-seven series requiring four victories. Every team in that situation has been eliminated.

This latest loss, Sunday night at American Airlines Center in Dallas, was disturbingly like the first two when the Wolves had home-court advantage at Target Center. The game was up for grabs in the final minutes. As the Wolves fumbled, Dallas snatched. Now the Wolves are humbled, Dallas unmatched.

Let’s get specific.

With the shot clock winding down, Ant zipped a pass cross-court to Kyle “SloMo” Anderson, who was the Wolves most effective player on Sunday. He had no choice but to catch-and-thrust a 20-footer in the same motion that improbably splashed through the net to put Minnesota up 104-102 with 5:02 remaining in the game.

The NBA definition of “clutch” time is when the game is in the final five minutes and the two teams are within five points of each other. From SloMo’s prayer basket at 5:02 until there were 15 seconds left in the game, the Mavs outscored the Wolves 14-1. Four different Mavericks scored on five shots without a miss. Five different Timberwolves clanked on seven shots without a make.

The gap in composure was palpable. Where Dallas was deliberate, the Wolves were desperate. One team coasted along with the flow of the game; the other fought themselves to stay above water.

This was understandably borne of recent past experience creating a dire present circumstance. In Game One, Dallas erased a four-point deficit with an 8-0 run that began with 3:37 left in the fourth quarter and ended with just 10 seconds to play. In Game Two, the Mavs scored six straight points in the final 1:29, punctuated by Dončić ’s step-back three-pointer over Rudy Gobert, to pull out a thriller, 109-108.

The Wolves would like to think that they were just a handful of plays away from flipping the entire series; that could have won two out of three, if not them all, had they just adhered to the game plan and executed down the stretch the way they had through most of this blessed season. But the playoffs are meant to test and temper those assumptions, bring you hard up against the reality of who you are.

Who are the Wolves? A team that swept the star-studded Phoenix Suns so thoroughly that the Suns fired their coach after a single season at the helm. A team that upended what was thought to be a budding legacy for three-time MVP Nikola Jokic and his Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets were the consensus pick to come out of the Western Conference. The Wolves beat them thrice in Denver, and came back from a 2-3 deficit to triumph in seven games. A team feted with numerous postseason awards and being led by a precocious and charismatic 22-year-old who was increasingly being compared to Michael Jordan.

With 20/20 hindsight, it is fair to say that, just as the Suns and Nuggets underestimated the Wolves in the postseason, Minnesota was not ready for the scrap, hunger, versatility and crunch time pedigree that the Mavericks possess. (Having thought the Wolves would win in five or six games, I’m guilty of this too.)

At the trading deadline in early February, Dallas acquired forward PJ Washington from Charlotte and center Daniel Gafford from Washington for a couple of first-round draft picks and three ill-fitting role players on their roster. Both Washington and Gafford were mediocre rotation players on rudderless teams tanking for a better position in the draft lottery. Suddenly both were in a starting lineup with Dončić and Irving, two future Hall-of-Fame playmakers who skills and foibles are so well defined that the right diligent, unselfish role players can be valuable and look good beside them. Dallas already had a couple of others: Undrafted, seventh-year journeyman swingman Derek Jones Jr., and pogo-stick, seven-foot rookie Dereck Lively II.

After about a month of tinkering and marinating, the Mavericks were monsters. When the starting lineup was comprised of Dončić , Irving, Washington, Gafford and Jones Jr., their record was 15-1. In the final 20 games of the regular season, they had the best defensive rating – fewest points allowed per possession – in the NBA. On a team with the backcourt of offensively-oriented dynamos Dončić and Irving, that is remarkable.

Perhaps most significant of all, Dončić and Irving have something to prove – something beyond the ken of Timberwolves. Wolves President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly said at the onset of the season that, after 20 barren seasons, it was time for this franchise to win a playoff series again. They have won two, matching the 2003-04 Wolves for deepest progress in the postseason.

They are the first playoff series victories in the careers of both Ant and KAT. By contrast, Dončić led the Mavs to the Western Conference Finals two years ago and came away empty. Irving won a championship with Lebron James back in 2016 and then infamously asked to be separated to see how he fared as the alpha star. He joined Dončić and the Mavs last season and the team didn’t even get into the playoffs.

It isn’t quite fair to say that Ant and KAT were too satisfied with simply making it this far; more that their inexperience has made them incapable of being sufficiently dissatisfied at the prospect of ending their season at this level.

The learning curve began almost immediately, when Ant announced before Game One that he wanted to guard Irving. Irving, who has done the bulk of his scoring in the second half this season, promptly went off for 24 points in the first half and left Ant literally gasping for air.

The template was set. While the Mavs’ aggressive, gap-oriented defense left Ant flummoxed as to when and how he should enable his teammates or force the scoring issue himself, and KAT couldn’t buy a three-point shot to save his reputation, Dončić and Irving were tandem scalpels carving up the Wolves. When Minnesota stayed on the three-point shooters in the corners, the dynamic duo drove into the paint at will, curating a steady diet of layups, lobs and floaters. When the Wolves blitzed the superstars, they dished to the corners, wheedled fouls, or simply scored filthy, highly-contested jumpers that tapped and transferred willpower from the defenders to the shooters.

Put it this way: In Game One, Dallas outscored the Wolves in the paint 62-38. In Game Three, the Wolves shot 9 for 30 from three-point range while Dallas was 14 for 28. And in Game Two, the ferocity in the face and body of Dončić right after he hit the winning step-back trey over Gobert with Dallas down two and three seconds to play remains the defining portrait of this series.

There is at least one more game to play, Tonight in Dallas. Games Five, Six and Seven will alternate between the two cities, should they be necessary. Four of the 154 teams down 3-0 managed to even the series and force a seventh game. Fifteen others won two and bowed out in six games.

Given that the Wolves are all but officially eliminated, Wolves Head Coach Chris Finch has to figure out a rotation that gives him the best chance of avoiding a sweep without putting an awkward blemish on the mental landscape of a roster that has indeed performed well above expectations.

Until this week, Ant has always had an answer for his legion of adoring fans. But recently there is a lassitude in his public reactions that matches his play on the court. My take on it is that his charisma stems from authenticity, from being genuine, and right now he is genuinely confused by what is happening. That’s why he’s trying on guises – he going to be “more aggressive” and he’s going to “start having fun again,” and, reflexively, he even gave his standard, “we’ll be alright,” after Sunday’s loss. As the Wolves await his lead, they have scored fewer points per possession with him on the court in this series than with any other player.

All that said, Ant is still assured his full standard amount of playing time on Tuesday and beyond. The same is not necessarily so for KAT, who after heroically arising as the defensive linchpin on Kevin Durant and Nikola Jokic in the first two series, must rue the return of the monkey on his back for a disappointing playoff performance in these past three games.

The self-proclaimed best shooting big man of all time is 3 for 22 from three-point range and both Naz Reid and SloMo Anderson have improved the team in his stead, sometimes in tandem with Gobert also has been off the floor. It must be frustrating to hear Finch say that Ant needs to speed up is pace and decision-making while KAT needs to slow down, because Naz has succeeded by getting on his horse and making things happen with torrid drives and quick treys.

Another wrinkle that might be explored is putting Nickeil Alexander-Walker into the starting lineup to guard Irving. NAW has the Wolves best net rating (points his team scores minus points his team allows per possession when he is on the court) this series, but a lot of that has to do with Mavs coach, Jason Kidd, subbing in backup guard Jaden Hardy when NAW is in the game. When NAW has drawn the assignment of guarding Irving, he’s done as well as anyone.

Is that worth bumping Conley out of the starting lineup? Well, he does have a troublesome calf injury and may have more juice in the tank late in games if his minutes are reduced. Or Finch could go small and sub NAW in for KAT, a configuration that might work especially since Lively II is likely to be out for Game Four with a neck injury suffered on Sunday – his absence in the second half clearly hurt the Mavs at both ends of the court.

Finch could also honor the season by finishing clean, with a standard rotation, going with the guys and the system that “brought ‘em” to this relatively exalted point in the postseason.

Bottom line, there aren’t any great options on how to close this series out. The Wolves already forfeited that part of the equation.

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