The Minnesota Timberwolves only had to face Victor Wembanyama for 12 minutes Sunday.
With the 7-foot-4 star’s ejection 3 1/2 minutes into the second quarter, the No. 6-seeded Timberwolves still had to rally to beat the Wembanyama-less San Antonio Spurs 114-109 in Game 4 at Target Center, evening this Western Conference semifinal series at 2.
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Anthony Edwards, playing with knee pain, started for the second straight game and finished with 36 points for the Timberwolves. Naz Reid added 15 points and nine rebounds, and he appeared to frustrate Wembanyama.
Wembanyama got tossed after he swung his right elbow and hit Reid’s throat with 8:39 left in the second quarter. The Wolves led 36-34 at the time, and with Reid making both flagrant free throws, the lead grew to four. Minnesota went into halftime ahead 60-56.
Minnesota had to battle back after Wembanyama departed, as it trailed 94-86 with under nine minutes left in the game. But Edwards led the way with a big 16-point fourth quarter, and the Timberwolves made the key plays down the stretch.
“We got to capitalize when Wemby’s out of the game,” Edwards told NBC’s Zora Stephenson after the final buzzer. “You know, we came out thinking like it was gonna be easy, but those guys are really good, even without Wemby. And so we still had to play hard, and I had to just take it upon myself and try to get us to win.”
Dylan Harper came off the bench and scored 24 points for the No. 2 Spurs, who will host Game 5 on Tuesday. De’Aaron Fox added 24 points and Stephon Castle had 20 points.
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Here are some key takeaways from Game 4:
Anthony Edwards to the rescue
With the Wolves franchise on his back and the season on the line, Edwards delivered a jaw-dropping flurry of scoring to tie the series and avoid a disaster of a loss.
Minnesota trailed by eight points early in the final quarter and couldn’t find any answers for the feisty, Wembanyama-less Spurs defense. Playing on two bad knees, Edwards scored on a tough drive, a pull-up jumper and hit two big 3s to push the Wolves in front. His putback with just over two minutes to play gave the Wolves a four-point lead, and the Wolves held on from there.
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Of all of his big moments for this franchise since being drafted, this one ranks near the top. The Wolves were dead in the water. Had they fallen behind 3-1, there was almost no chance they could come back to win the series.
Edwards stepped off the floor during a timeout to take some oxygen with four minutes to play, and breathed life into the team the rest of the way. The Wolves needed every one of his 16 fourth-quarter points, and they will need a heck of a lot more from him the rest of the way in this series.
The Wolves still should have major concerns, given they weren’t able to pull away with Wembanyama limited to just 12 minutes because of the ejection. But those concerns are better addressed with the series 2-2.
Target Center has not seen its last basketball game of the season. Game 6 will be played because of Ant. — Jon Krawczynski, Timberwolves senior writer
Will there be fallout from Wembanyama’s shocking ejection?
As soon as Wembanyama landed that elbow on Reid’s neck, his ejection was inevitable. The Spurs came so close to pulling off the win of the season, but the Wolves’ power won out in the end.
The Spurs figured out how they wanted to attack without Wembanyama at halftime and completely flipped the game in the third quarter. Their three point guards were able to score in the paint at will, and the team’s defense was fantastic for most of the time after the teams came out from the locker room.
The problem came later in the fourth quarter, when the Spurs’ low man defender had to step up to stop Edwards or Julius Randle and the Wolves’ other bigs were able to cut behind the defense to clean everything up on the glass. The Spurs couldn’t create many 3s, and it bit them when they needed to come back in the final minutes. Their pressing defense proved to be vital in making one last gasp even possible, but the Spurs just didn’t have the shooting or defensive size to handle Edwards leading the Wolves back into this one.
Now they await a review of Wembanyama’s flagrant to see if he will be hit with a suspension for Game 5. The Spurs appear to have the upper hand when he’s out there, but the Wolves are now officially back in the series. — Jared Weiss, Spurs staff writer