The Minnesota Timberwolves need to win Game 3 of their 2024 Western Conference finals series against the Dallas Mavericks. Failure to do so would mean a seemingly virtual elimination from title contention, considering that there have been zero teams in league history who have ever come back from a 3-0 playoff hope and won a best-of-seven playoff series.
And if the Timberwolves are to win in Dallas this Sunday night, they are going to need star big man Karl-Anthony Towns to have a breakout performance in the series.
Towns has yet to show up two games into the Dallas series. In Game 1’s 108-105 loss, he only mustered 16 points on a salty 6/20 shooting from the floor. He was worse in Game 2, as he only managed to put up 15 points on 4/16 shooting from the field in a 109-108 loss. Ahead of Game 3, Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch revealed what he told Towns amid the player’s struggles in the series.
Via Tim MacMahon of ESPN:
Chris Finch on his message to his struggling All-Stars: “Ant, you’ve got to speed it up. KAT, you’ve got to slow it down. It’s really simple.”
The Timberwolves lost by just a total of four points in the two games so far versus the Mavericks, so it’s not hard to imagine that Minnesota would have been leading the series 2-0 at this point had Towns or Edwards have only shot better in Games 1 and 2.
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