The Golden State Warriors won a somewhat unusual first-round series on Sunday. Though the Houston Rockets had overwhelming strengths, such as their size, rebounding and defensive physicality, their inability to generate half-court offense was one of the most glaring weaknesses any team had in the playoff field. It took them seven games, but the Warriors finally managed to exploit that weakness enough to advance to the second round.
There, they’ll face a Minnesota Timberwolves team that won a similarly unorthodox first-round matchup against the Los Angeles Lakers. Like the Rockets, the Lakers were a team driven by an overwhelming strength (in their case, individual shot-creation), but bogged down by insurmountable weaknesses. The Lakers had no size or depth. Though the last three games were all decided in the final minutes, the Timberwolves dispatched the Lakers in all of them and won their series in five games.
These victories aren’t exactly meaningless. The Rockets were the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference and the Lakers were the betting favorite. But if you operate under the prevailing wisdom that the playoffs are ultimately defined by a team’s ability to exploit an opponent’s weaknesses and mask its own, they just didn’t tell us much about where the Warriors or Timberwolves stand in a more traditional playoff setting. The Lakers and Rockets had flaws that were so glaring and obvious that any team with real championship ambitions should have been able to beat them. We can’t know yet, therefore, whether or not Golden State’s or Minnesota’s championship ambitions are yet legitimate.
In a sense, that makes them perfect second-round opponents for one another, before, we presume, the winner takes on the nearly flawless Thunder in the Western Conference finals. In some ways, they mirror each other. In others, they mirror the opponents they just conquered, only without those obvious shortcomings.
Both the Warriors and the Timberwolves started the season slowly. The Warriors, due largely to their inability to make a star trade in the offseason, were in 10th place in the Western Conference as late as Feb. 12. The Timberwolves, due largely to the fit issues that stemmed from their successful execution of a star trade, were in 10th place in the Western Conference as late as March 1. The Warriors finished the season on a 21-7 run because they managed to acquire Jimmy Butler. The Timberwolves finished the season on a 17-4 run because the big name they acquired in the offseason, Julius Randle, returned from a month-long absence and figured out how to fit within the structure of a pre-existing contender.
The Warriors just beat the NBA’s preeminent bully ball team, but the Timberwolves just played a full series of bully ball against the Lakers. Between Randle, Rudy Gobert and Naz Reid, they have a three-headed front-court monster that just helped them post the second-best rebounding rate of the first round, just behind Houston’s, against the Lakers. The Rockets outscored the Warriors by 74 points in the paint across their seven-game series. The Timberwolves outscored the Lakers by 76 in their five-game battle. The Warriors went from an enormous, physical opponent to a different enormous, physical opponent.
The difference is that this one is far less limited. The Rockets ranked 27th in 3-point attempt rate. The Timberwolves ranked sixth. Houston had no singular superstar to generate half-court offense for them. Minnesota has no such problem with Anthony Edwards in place. Houston had no real stylistic pivots. The Timberwolves can comfortably use one big man or two. They can gear their perimeter players toward offense (more Donte DiVincenzo and Mike Conley) or defense (more Jaden McDaniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker). They can adjust. The Rockets couldn’t.
The Timberwolves just beat the NBA team most defined by small-ball. The Lakers all but abandoned Jaxson Hayes by the end of that series hoping that Luka Dončić, LeBron James and Austin Reaves would just be able to create easy shot after easy shot with five-out spacing. The Minnesota defense held up against that onslaught, but the small-ball Warriors are another matter entirely. When Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler were on the floor with Draymond Green at center during the regular season, they scored a blistering 125.1 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass. The Lakers wanted to be an elite small-ball offense. The Warriors actually are one.
And yet, since the Butler trade, they’ve been so much more. Those Curry-Butler-Green at center lineups? They draw 27 free throws per 100 possessions, a nearly impossibly high figure for a team that doesn’t rely on traditional bigs or guard penetration. Jimmy Butler has taken an offense that generates no rim pressure to one that creates more than enough, and unlike the Lakers, who went down with the same five players on the court at nearly all times, they can make meaningful lineup changes. They threw Kevon Looney out as a curveball to slow down Houston’s rebounding and, in Game 7, he gave them good minutes. They can lean on Gary Payton II or Moses Moody for defense or Brandin Podziemski or Buddy Hield for offense. All four had important moments in the Houston series. Once again, they can adjust. The Lakers couldn’t.
The deeper you go, the more puzzle pieces start to fit here. The Warriors are the old team here. They just played seven grueling games against the Rockets, and now have to turn around and start the Minnesota series on Tuesday. They won’t get an extra day off until the two-day break between Games 5 and 6. Can they handle the physical demands that come with playing this late in the playoffs? The Timberwolves aren’t exactly inexperienced. They made the Western Conference finals a year ago. But Karl-Anthony Towns is a Knick now, and before the Laker series, Julius Randle had been a playoff disaster. Can the team still finding itself hold up against the most experienced and self-assured duo in the entire playoff field?
In two weeks, one of these teams will still be standing and will very likely be preparing to play against a Thunder team that stood head and shoulders above the Western Conference field all year. Usually, by now, we’d have a good idea of who is really equipped to challenge them. But because of this year’s tidal wave of player movement and the unusually imbalanced first-round matchups the Warriors and Timberwolves just survived, we really don’t yet. For all we know, one of these teams is only here because of a single, favorable matchup.
But on paper, these are far more balanced, versatile and playoff-suited teams than the ones they just knocked out. That makes them a much closer approximation of the Thunder than anything either has seen thus far, and therefore the perfect measuring stick for the other with the No. 1 seed looming on the other side of the bracket. If you want to win the West and reach the Finals, you have to be able to beat multi-dimensional opponents. That’s what the Thunder are. It’s what the Warriors and Timberwolves look like on paper, too. Now there’s chance to prove it against a worthy opponent.