3 balloon bursting performances from Timberwolves 1st Summer League game

If you didn’t have a chance to watch or follow the Minnesota Timberwolves’ first game of the 2023 NBA Summer League, you truly missed out on a barn burner. As expected, this team is loaded for bear, and it showed nearly throughout the game.

In fact, the only time that this game was truly up for grabs was after the Timberwolves spotted their opponent, the New Orleans Pelicans, with a six-point advantage early in the first quarter.

The Timberwolves took over from there, only losing the lead once more in the third quarter, before kicking in the afterburners and winning the game handily by the time the final buzzer sounded.  It was a heartwarming win for the Timberwolves, a team whose future looks every bit as bright as the present.

The win was expected, but which Wolves were responsible?

But the win was no surprise, at least not to those who have been following the Timberwolves summer league news so far. If you need to catch up, here is a great index of articles to help you do so:

But even as the Timberwolves claimed the victory in the game as expected, there were a number of surprises in store for the way the team did so.

The Timberwolves were not exceptionally sharp in terms of shooting accuracy as a team. The Timberwolves only shot 45 percent from the floor, and a soft but expected 25 percent from three-point range. In terms of outplaying the Pelicans, the Timberwolves were slightly behind in rebounding while slightly ahead on assists and blocks.

So how did the Timberwolves end up in the win column if the team did not dominate in the statistics?

That”s what we are here to find out.