April 09, 2013; Oakland, CA, USA; Golden State Warriors shooting guard Klay Thompson (11) gestures after scoring a basket against the Minnesota Timberwolves during the second quarter at Oracle Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

Man, the Golden State Warriors are chuckers. And when they’re chucking at a fairly successful rate, they’re hard to beat. That happened, and then some, on Tuesday night at Oracle Arena. Klay Thompson couldn’t miss for a long while, and the Wolves could not match the intensity or shot-making ability of a team on the cusp of their second playoff appearance in 18 years. They just had to do it against the only franchise with a worse current mark of playoff futility….

The game began with the Warriors content to settle for a flurry of contested mid-range jumpers, which afforded the Wolves some time to find their rhythm offensively. In fact, the Wolves’ offense hummed along quite nicely early in the game, and it was their defensive rotations that somewhat uncharacteristically lagged behind the crisp ball movement and quick releases of Golden State.

Klay Thompson in particular hurt the Wolves early, shooting a perfect 5 of 5 from the field and dropping 12 points on the visitors in the opening frame, helping the Warriors to manage a 26-26 tie headed to the start of the second quarter. The Wolves’ bench played very well towards the end of the first quarter and into the second, with both J.J. Barea and Chase Budinger putting some quick points on the board.

At the midway point in the second quarter, Thompson had already poured in 23 points in a surprisingly efficient fashion. This was especially frustrating, given his general not-goodness. For as good of a shooter as he allegedly is, his normally sub-par efficiency is a detriment to his team. Tuesday night against the Wolves just happened to be one of those nights where his jumper was falling from all over the court, creating a myriad of problems for the visitors.

The Wolves held a three point lead late in the first half, but failed to execute in the final minute and instead of owning a two-for-one situation for themselves, they handed it to Golden State and found themselves trailing 55-54 after a late burst from the Warriors.

The second half was extremely sloppy, and the Wolves managed to hang around through the midway point of the third quarter before allowing the crowd to get involved after a Klay Thompson-Luke Ridnour skirmish (and subsequent Ridnour technical foul) and an alley-oop that stretched the Warriors’ lead to double digits. Golden State would never look back, as they expanded their lead to 86-70 by the end of the frame and ran away with the game in the fourth quarter, eventually winning by a final tally of 105-89.

Some quick thoughts….

- So….remember Stephen Curry? 9.5 out of 10 people would have selected Curry immediately after Ricky Rubio in the 2009 NBA Draft. Wolves fans know this; we talk about it a lot. But let’s really think about it. Let it sink in until you can’t bear it any longer. Besides the obvious size limitations, Curry is exactly the kind of guard you would want to pair with Rubio. Exactly. Prototype. Ouch.

- Rubio could not hit the broadside of a barn on Tuesday night, shooting 0 for 10 on the night and pushing his streak of futility somewhere north of 20 shots with only 1 make. He finished with a line of 5 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal, and 1 turnover in just 22 minutes. Four of his assists came in the first quarter, and Rubio did not get off the bench in the fourth quarter of the blowout.

- I’m not asking for revisionist’s history on everything. Just give us the Curry-over-Flynn pick. We’ll still take Wes Johnson, Wayne Ellington, all those trades and free agent signings….Rubio/Curry/Kirilenko/Love/Pekovic with Budinger/Ridnour or Barea off the bench….yes please.

- The Wolves will be in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening to take on the Clippers at 9:30 CST.

The Timberwolves’ last win in the series – and only one in the last 24 meetings – was 117-107 in double overtime at home March 6, 2007.

Now that we’re all psyched to witness a trend-buster, did you see this last night?

But that smile. Eh, I don’t know, there’s something missing.

There are enough scoops and finger rolls in that highlight reel to make you think Jonny Flynn just capable of such feats. (David Kahn to Steph Curry: We don’t need you.)

Over at Ball Don’t Lie, they summed it thusly:

Playing the full 48 minutes, Curry scored a career-high 54 points on 18-of-28 shooting, including a mind-boggling 11-of-13 mark on three-pointers. It was a masterful performance, with Curry further proving himself as the purest shooter in the NBA.

Mainly, I just don’t understand why Curry wasn’t suspended after the Indiana fake-thuggery show. Moving on…

Steve McPherson waxes morality in sports through no small amount of Game of Thrones parsing over at A Wolf Among Wolves:

It’s hard to see the Timberwolves so listless, hard to see them barely eke out 33 points in a half and not even crack 90 in an OT game against a team composed at least partially of cast-offs from the Wolves. It was bad enough to see them down by 18 with under a minute to go in the first half, but as they drew close in the 4th quarter, I was reminded of Ned Stark and Game of Thrones. If they had come back to win the game, it wouldn’t have made them good any more than losing the game makes them bad, not in the moral sense.

We like to ascribe losses to a lack of effort, which translates to a lack of heart, a moral failing. When a team wins, we like to see it as a group effort, a triumph of grit over adversity, a sign of purity and goodness. It’s not wrong to do this, but it’s helpful if we can understand that we’re doing this, if we can know that being good doesn’t lead inevitably to success, just as failure doesn’t ineluctably come from being bad.

Sports is its own kind of fantasy setting, the place where we cling most doggedly to the notion that the way we as observers act or think during a game can somehow influence the outcome. We wear the same socks or hats to game after game, sit in the same spot on the couch, eat the same foods, drink the same drinks. We invest teams with our hearts, assign them our morals, as surely as we do characters in a story. I would just ask you to know that you’re doing it. As Hamlet pointed out to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when they protested that Denmark was not a prison to them, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Seems like as good a segue into a series of Caged Lion highlights, if I’ve ever heard one…

Really not sure how that first dunk is not a travel, but the point: if Derrick Williams could line up against the Phoenix power forwards every night, he’d be an All Star running circles around Scola while bullying the Morris twins to the rim every time. Maybe the audition will prove fruitful and the Suns will decide what they could really use in exchange for Jared Dudley is an uncaged lion like D-Will. Progress is nice to see.