Fresh off his impressive postseason debut, Australian rising star Josh Giddey has been brought back down to earth after a disappointing display for Oklahoma City Thunder against Minnesota Timberwolves.
Giddey only had six points, four assists and went two for 13 from the floor.
Compare that with his 31 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds against the Pelicans the previous match and it was a contrasting performance for the Australian.
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Overall for the 2022/23 season though, Giddey finished with an average of 14.2 points a game, six rebounds, 6.6 assists and 1.4 steals.
Giddey wasn’t the only Thunder player off their game, with the Timberwolves cruising home to a 120-95 victory in an extraordinary display that had statisticians reaching for record books.
Karl-Anthony Towns had 28 points and 11 rebounds to lead Minnesota into the playoffs, finishing the play-in tournament on Friday night.
Rudy Gobert had 21 points and 10 rebounds in his return from exile for swinging at teammate Kyle Anderson, and the Wolves filled out the NBA playoff bracket by seizing the No.8 seed in the Western Conference with a near-perfect performance at the end of another harder-than-it-had-to-be season.
Giddey fires up after groin shot
Anthony Edwards had 19 points and 10 rebounds for the Wolves, who had a 58-30 advantage in points in the paint. They will face No.1 seed Denver in a best-of-seven series starting on Sunday night.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 22 points, going 12 for 12 from the free throw line but just five for 19 from the field. Jalen Williams and Lu Dort each scored 17 points.
With their best defender Jaden McDaniels out with a broken hand — thanks to a wall he punched out of frustration in the final regular-season game shortly before Gobert took a swing at Anderson in an argument during a timeout — the Timberwolves put Nickiel Alexander-Walker in the starting lineup to guard the dynamic Gilgeous-Alexander. They’re cousins, actually.
Gilgeous-Alexander was slow to get going in the Thunder’s play-in tournament opener, too, before scoring 25 of his 32 points after halftime in the 113-108 win over New Orleans. This time, the NBA’s fourth-leading scorer picked up his fourth foul early in the third quarter and then had to leave for treatment a few minutes later after Gobert accidentally elbowed him in the eye as he rebounded and dunked his own miss.
Towns had 24 points on 8-for-12 shooting in Minnesota’s 108-102 overtime loss in Los Angeles in the first play-in game on Tuesday, but he camped out on the perimeter too much down the stretch as the Wolves offense grinded to a woeful finish.
The Wolves won three of four matchups with the Thunder, playing twice in the first five days of the season and twice more by mid-December. Towns was out with an injury then. The three-team trade that jettisoned D’Angelo Russell from the Minnesota backcourt and brought in Conley and Alexander-Walker was still two months from conception.
So was it even worth reviewing the film from those games?
“We do because we’re paranoid, and what else are you going to do? Like, watch Netflix?” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said pre-game.
“But it’s different. They’re missing guys. We’re different. Both teams have evolved since then.”
— with AP.
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