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The Minnesota Timberwolves weren’t looking for a history lesson Friday night at Target Center, but the Boston Celtics found the time and place suitable for one anyway.
The Wolves are, by and large, the up-and-coming team looking to break through and snatch the franchise’s first playoff appearance in eight years. The battle-tested Celtics, still led by its core that helped deliver an NBA title in 2008, are a group with a track record of winning under any circumstance down the stretch. On Friday at Target Center, Boston put together a 100-79 victory that gave Minnesota a close-up look at playoff basketball whether they were ready or not.
“You can definitely learn a lot from this team, how hard they play, the mode and how they approach the game at this point in the season,” Wolves forward Kevin Love said. “And it just didn’t seem, myself included, we didn’t have our legs.”
Minnesota simply never got into a rhythm on either end of the floor, and it cost them a shot to pick up a much-needed win at home in the thick of the postseason chase. The end result was dropping to 3.5 games behind the Rockets and Nuggets for the seventh and eight spots in the Western Conference before heading out for their 10th and 11th road games in the span of 13 contests.
Coach Rick Adelman said it’s not easy to win on the road, and these home games are crucial to their playoff chances. But the Wolves (25-28) simply couldn’t match Boston’s intensity on Friday at Target Center.
“We’ve haven’t won the games we needed to win here,” Adelman said. “Now we have to go on the raod again.”
