Oftentimes toward the end of a basketball game that is sort of but not especially close, one team will take a multiple-possession lead with only a little bit of time left and I, despite having watched the Indiana Pacers stage what felt like dozens of miracles last year, will wonder what the point is of watching the few grim minutes of free throws that conclude those sorts of contests. But sometimes, there comes an ending so funny and so stupid that it reminds me: The tail ends of games are always worth sticking around for, because something amazing could happen. Something, in other words, like what happened in Minneapolis Wednesday night.
In retrospect, a Houston Rockets–Minnesota Timberwolves matchup is ripe for a hilarious ending. Minnesota, especially without Anthony Edwards, can be maddeningly inconsistent, prone to prolonged bouts of brainlessness characterized by clusters of turnovers. This is the team that lost on a 39-8 run to the dregs of the Milwaukee Bucks last year. Houston, meanwhile, is incapable of running even vaguely functional offense under pressure, thanks to the combination of coach Ime Udoka's insistence on playing a bunch of 6-foot-9 guys who can't do anything; the dour, isolationist presence of Kevin Durant; and Alperen Sengun's plodding style. The Rockets came to Minnesota with a 1-6 record in overtime games.
Wednesday night's first collapse belonged to the Wolves. With just under four minutes left, Minnesota's Jaden McDaniels stripped Durant and got an easy dunk to give his team an 11-point lead. Houston immediately popped a 12-0 run in response, and exhaled a sigh of relief as McDaniels left with an injury. The Wolves recovered their composure to take a one-point lead with 28 seconds left. Rudy Gobert then fouled Sengun (and fouled out of the game) while the ball was still out of bounds on an inbound play, allowing Houston to tie it for free and granting the Rockets a chance at the win. They blew that chance, ceding a 3-on-2 fastbreak that the Wolves failed to score on thanks to a tremendous shot-block by a bloodied Sengun.
All that set the table for the funniest overtime possible.
Houston began overtime with a 13-0 run. Reed Sheppard and Durant were hooping, while the Wolves continued to turn the ball over. Without Gobert patrolling the middle for Minnesota, the Rockets were finally able to get to and score at the rim. Naz Reid got ejected midway through that 13-0 run, after yapping at referee Scott Foster over a foul call with a little over four minutes left, and it seemed the Wolves were dead.
Instead, the Rockets made the same erroneous assumption I was talking about at the start of this story: Up 13 with three minutes to play, they relaxed as if the game were over. Mike Conley, of all guys, popped a three on the Wolves' ensuing possession, sparking a 15-0 Minnesota run to end the game. Along the way, Durant missed a pair of free throws, Houston committed an eight-second violation, and Minnesota's Julius Randle put together what felt like the first good stretch of his largely disappointing season.
The comeback from a 13-point deficit (or collapse from a 13-point lead, depending on your rooting interest) is the largest in an overtime period since the NBA started recording play-by-play data in the 2002–03 season. The tenor of the collapse was typified by Sengun raising his arms in protest as Minnesota's Terrence Shannon Jr. tipped an inbounds pass to end the game.
Reporters who visited Houston's postgame locker room say they saw several Rockets players gathered around someone's phone to watch back the last few possessions, as if they themselves had no idea what had happened in a game they had all just nominally participated in. That says as much as the collapse itself: The Rockets have been passengers in their own campaign, never turning from a somewhat misshapen collection of talented players into a real team. The one thing they were good at was grabbing 10,000 offensive rebounds per game, which got a lot harder when Steven Adams got hurt. No disrespect to Adams, but if an injury to a 32-year-old journeyman who scores less than three buckets a night can ruin your season, that's pretty damning.
I'm not going to totally write the Rockets off in the playoffs quite yet, but there's no reason to believe in them. As for Minnesota, I still harbor an irrational fondness for the Wolves, though their level of reliance on Bones Hyland is as concerning as it is exhilarating. Stuff like this is what Mickey Mouse March is all about.
