Warriors

A few seconds after Mike Conley's clear foul was ignored, the Wolves got a steal and Towns hit a 3.

They are half a game behind the Warriors for the sixth and final guaranteed playoff spot and just 1.5 games behind the [Rudy Gobert](/nba/players/2067669/rudy-gobert/) drew a foul and earned two free throws to potentially tie the game. That Conley openly attempted to foul only made the situation more bizarre; this wasn't a typical missed call on a bang-bang play. Once Green got the ball back at the top of the key for a second time, [Kyle Anderson](/nba/players/2135515/kyle-anderson/) ran at him with what appeared to be the intention of fouling, but Green did not want to take the free throws and tried to quickly get rid of the ball. [Draymond Green](/nba/players/1992792/draymond-green/), and still the Wolves could not get a foul. They did so thanks to a clutch 3-pointer in the closing seconds by [Karl-Anthony Towns](/nba/players/2152531/karl-anthony-towns/), who finished with 14 points and five rebounds, but also thanks to a critical error by the referees.

Even during pregame warmups, Gary Payton II received a loud ovation from the home crowd. The moment the game started, Payton went right to the stationary bike ...

This is right up there with one of the most frustrating losses of the season. The Warriors turned it over twice, and Minnesota took advantage. With 26 seconds remaining in the first quarter, Payton officially was back on the court in a Warriors jersey. The Warriors were down by two points. Two turnovers in the final minute of regulation was the difference. The Warriors failed there. Early in the fourth quarter, Payton blocked Towns, as seen above. Jordan Poole led the Warriors in points for the second straight game off the bench, ending with 27. The first look of Payton back in a Warriors jersey was exactly what Steve Kerr warned everybody about. He then played seven-plus minutes in the second before sitting the entire third. He scored nine points, shooting 3-of-4 from the field and made one of his two 3-point attempts, along with draining both of his free throws. But once again, the Warriors were downed by their own sloppiness Sunday night at Chase Center in a 99-96 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

It came in the Bay Area, where the Wolves had lost 12 straight games dating to 2016. San Francisco, Oakland. Chase Center, Oracle Arena. The venue mattered not.

All four suffered to varying degrees because of it and Towns is the only one of the four who remains with the team. That has to happen in the playoffs. The Wolves have done a disservice to several of their promising young players over the years, including That prompts the Wolves to instead go for a steal, and Anderson read Draymond Green perfectly to intercept his pass and head the other way, where he fed KAT for the go-ahead 3. But the Wolves did bother him and did not allow him to shoot a single free throw in the game, a sign that the bigger defenders were keeping their feet against the craftiest player in the game. He finished with 12 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists, five steals and a blocked shot, the latest in a long line of high-quality performances for a team that desperately needs his composure and decision-making. “We weren’t able to get to the matchups we wanted because sometimes we had guys we couldn’t always put on the ball,” Finch said of the team’s defensive struggles early in the season. In doing so, they slayed a dragon that has burnt them to a crisp over and over again at Chase and Oracle over the last six years. In the jubilant visiting locker room after a stunning 99-96 victory over the Warriors on Sunday, the Timberwolves took on the look of a team that has finally found a way to make this crazy plan a problem for the rest of the league. The Wolves simply have to do that against smaller teams to survive. For a couple of minutes in the fourth quarter, Finch went with a preposterously big lineup of Towns, Reid, It came in the Bay Area, where the Wolves had lost 12 straight games dating to 2016.

The NBA has released their Last Two Minute report for the Golden State Warrior vs. Minnesota Timberwolves.