First of all, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a worse way for the Miami Heat to start things out after a big trade than to lose to the Al Jefferson-less Wolves. Secondly, I'm watching the Blazers/Griz game right now and the Blazers' fans are being absolutely classless by booing Darius Miles. Really? Booing a guy who is trying to come back after a devastating knee injury? You stay classy Portland. The Blazers announcers are handling the situation with equal amounts of class; fawning over GM Kevin Pritchard and hoping to catch a shot of him on the phone. Ooooohhh, exciting. On to the Wolves game...
If the Wolves are going to win some games from here on out it will have to be against the odds. Against the Heat, Sebastian Telfair went for a career high in points (30) while shooting 6-10 from distance and 10-10 at the line. While Bassy is my favorite Wolf, he's a .306 career shooter from beyond the arc and he carries a decent 22 FG/FG rate. In other words, his performance against the Heat, while fantastic, is not something you can bank on night in and night out.
Moving on with the outlier theme, the Wolves, the 3rd worst 3 point shooting team in the league, shot .636 from beyond the arc as a whole. It wasn't just the bombs that were falling. The Wolves are also the 3rd worst shooting team in terms of eFG%, at 47.4%. They ended the game against the Heat with a .623 mark. All 5 starters shot 50% or better from the field.
They also out-rebounded Miami by a mind-bending 25 net boards. It was especially brutal on the offensive glass, where the Wolves grabbed 34.4% of their misses compared to 7.3% for the Heat.
Despite all of this, the Wolves found themselves down big early and it took a few clutch shots from Bassy (admittedly against his shooting % odds) late to do the Heat in. The Wolves committed 21 turnovers while forcing only 7.
I don't really have anything else to add. It was an enjoyable win fueled by my favorite player. It's not something I expect on a night-in/night-out basis, but I'll take it. I'd also take a Bassy shirt if they were ever made available by the team, but that's a story for another post.
Until later....I'm going to go watch Darius Miles get booed some more.