Playoff risers? It’s time for the Timberwolves to prove it again

Generally, Chris Finch despises the notion of a basketball team “flipping a switch” for important games or portions of the season.

Coaches tend to believe you develop habits throughout the course of the campaign that carry you through high-leverage moments.

But Minnesota didn’t necessarily do that this season. The Wolves are a 49-win, No. 6 seed in the Western Conference playoffs for the second consecutive season. The difference this time around is there was no 17-4 sprint to the finish to inspire confidence heading into the postseason, nor the league’s fourth-best net rating touted in 2025.

Everything on the record suggests the Wolves are … well, average.

They’re 13th in offensive rating, eighth in defense and 10th in net rating. That’s not the recipe for a championship contender.

But was the product Minnesota put on the floor over the course of the 82-game regular season indicative of the team’s true ceiling? Fresh off consecutive Western Conference finals appearances, Anthony Edwards noted at points in the regular season, and again this week, that it occasionally felt as though the Timberwolves were simply trying to get to the playoffs.

“But we’re here now, and all the other excuses are out the window,” Edwards said. “So, it’s time.”

Time for the Timberwolves to reveal themselves — are they true playoff risers or a team that simply wasn’t at the level they aspired to compete at back in September?

“I’ve said it all year. We know the team we can be and who we have been. It’s about whether we can maintain that,” Finch said. “You don’t ever really want to be a flip-the-switch team, but we do have a switch to flip and we have to flip it now. When we do that, everybody kind of becomes the best version of themselves and that brings out that continuity and connection that we need.”

So, a switch indeed exists?

“We’ll see,” Finch said with a chuckle. “We’ll see.”

Perhaps it’s what Minnesota flipped down the backstretch last season in a desperate, and eventually successful, attempt to dodge the play-in tournament. The Wolves then parlayed that closing run into a pair of impressive series victories.

There’s an argument to be made Minnesota is simply better suited for playoff basketball. Donte DiVincenzo noted the playoffs are physical, and the Wolves are a physical team.

“Sometimes in the regular season, the whistles are a little bit earlier than it is in the playoffs,” DiVincenzo said. “So, just being able to be physical at a full 94 feet (in the postseason), being able to switch things, being able to just be ourselves.”

The idea of themselves, anyway.

Minnesota’s 2024 Western Conference semifinals victory over Denver remains fresh in the minds of fans, especially this week ahead of the playoff rematch. In that series, the Timberwolves’ used their harassing defense to rattle and, ultimately, wear down Denver.