Wolves win back-and-forth, high-scoring game against Clippers
The Timberwolves and Clippers elected to play little defense Monday night and Minnesota held on for a 130-120 win at Target Center to snap a three-game losing streak.
With Andrew Wiggins out sick and Derrick Rose returning from an ankle injury, head coach Ryan Saunders mixed up the starting lineup by going with Jeff Teague at point guard, Josh Okogie at shooting guard, Luol Deng at small forward, Dario Saric at power forward and Karl-Anthony Towns at center.
Saunders said he just "needed to mix things up" and that Taj Gibson, whom came off the bench with Saric in the starting lineup, supported the decision.
The game was wild. Minnesota trailed at the half and then went on a massive run to take a 87-64 lead midway through the third quarter, and then in a flash Lou Williams went bonkers with 34 of his game-high 45 points to cut Minnesota's lead to four points late in the fourth quarter.
Minnesota held on, but not without a little panic.
Deng started in place of Wiggins and was a team-best plus-28 with 12 points and nine rebounds in 38 minutes, and Saric made 7-of-11 shots and finished with 19 points and eight rebounds in 33 minutes.
Rose came off the bench and scored 22 points in 25 minutes.
Oh, and Towns put up another double-double with 24 points and 10 rebounds while hitting 10-of-12 free throws.
Minnesota hosts Houston on Wednesday night and it's another big game if they hope to stay in the playoff race. They're four games behind eighth-place Sacramento entering play Tuesday.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.