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Nowell Has Heroic Night for T-Wolves Team Missing All 5 Starters

The former UW guard provides a career-high 29 points, including a stirring fourth-quarter dunk.
Dan Raley|
Nowell Has Heroic Night for T-Wolves Team Missing All 5 Starters
Nowell Has Heroic Night for T-Wolves Team Missing All 5 Starters

In the continuous COVID intrusion on the sporting world, all five Minnesota Timberwolves starters and more were missing for Monday night's NBA game against the Boston Celtics.

Luckily for the home team, Jaylen Nowell was healthy.

Well rested.

Ready to have a career night.

The former University of Washington shooting guard took advantage of a dire situation when he dropped a personal-best 29 points on Boston in the Timberwolves' rousing 108-103 victory, punctuating his outing in Minneapolis with a "posterizing" dunk on the Celtics' Jabari Parker.

Nowell was sensational throughout this game for Minnesota (16-17) by coming off the bench and nearly quadrupling his normal game time because his team was down eight players in all. 

Missing for the Timberwolves were starters Karl-Anthony Towns, D'Angelo Russell, Anthony Edwards,  Patrick Beverley and Jarred Vanderbilt, plus reserves Taurean Prince, Naz Reid and McKinley Wright

Averaging just 9 minutes a game, Nowell, the one-time Pac-12 Player of the Year, played 35, enabling him to get into the flow of the game and find his stroke.

He canned 10 of 18 shots, including 6 of 9 behind the 3-point line. Yet it was his shortest field goal of the evening that everyone will remember.

Igniting a 13-2 Timberwolves run in early the fourth quarter, Nowell took a pass up high, drove to the hoop, wound up and slammed one down on a helpless Parker. 

A third-year NBA player appearing in his 76th game, Nowell topped his career-best scoring output by a point. 

He got help from another former Husky in Jaden McDaniels, the Timberwolves' second-year forward who likewise was promoted from reserve status to starter to face the Celtics (16-18). Pulling 36 minutes, McDaniels chipped in 17 points and 5 rebounds.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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