Minnesota Timberwolves (39-29) at Washington Wizards (38-29)

6:00 P.M. CDT

NBATV

For the second game in a row, the Wolves will be facing an opponent that is missing their superstar point guard. They’re coming off a #mustwin against the defending champion Warriors in which, just checking my notes here, ah yes, the game was #won.

Hot dog! A win against Golden State?!

The bleeding has officially stopped, for now. Karl-Anthony Towns had himself quite the fourth quarter going 6-10 from the field and nearly singlehandedly staved off a GSW comeback that you knew was coming.

Andrew Wiggins played great defense on Klay Thompson, who ended up shooting 3-12 from deep, throughout the game. He chased him around all game and stayed on his hip.

Derrick Rose played in his first game for the team and was atrocious. So bad. -17 in six minutes of play, how? Let’s hope that means he won’t play anymore (eyes roll into the back of my freakin’ head because I know that won’t happen).

And that brings us to the Wizards. This is...familiar territory. Minnesota lost at home to them earlier this season. They were playing without John Wall at that time as well. It was a frustrating game where the team seemed out of gas in the fourth. (I covered the game and I can tell you they were ABSOLUTELY out of gas.)

Of course, they went on to beat the Pelicans on the ol’ road back-to-back the next night which upended my thought process. (SHIT!)

Throughout the year the minutes thing has almost exclusively come from talking heads, shouting heads, SCREAMING HEADS, and fans alike. Except for some jokes from Jimmy, the players would never resort to that kind of reasoning.

Now that it’s crunch time, it shouldn’t be discussed at all. Thibs will not be changing rotations no matter how much we bemoan it. This is on the eight (nine including the corpse of Rose) guys who are seeing minutes and they need to step up.

I sound like a bad high school coach right now but hey, maybe it will work. The lack of #analysis here is because the Wolves just need to do what they did the first time against Washington, minus the collapse in the fourth.

Chuggin’ a forty for forty wins tonight.

Starting Lineups

Wolves

Jeff Teague
Andrew Wiggins
Nemanja Bjelica
Taj Gibson
Karl-Anthony Towns

Wizards

Tomas Satoransky
Bradley Beal
Otto Porter Jr.
Markieff Morris
Marcin Gortat

Prediction: The #future (Towns and Wiggins) combine for 60 points on their way to a 113-102 victory.