Anthony Edwards didn't play Friday night. Minnesota's rookie backup center, Joan Beringer, left in the second quarter with a broken nose after catching an elbow from New Orleans' Trendon Watford. The Timberwolves still beat the Pelicans 115-109 in New Orleans. That's the story. The griping about the officials in the fourth quarter is noise, and it shouldn't swallow the real one.
Start with the whistle, since it's the louder argument. Minnesota trailed entering the fourth quarter after a miserable shooting third, then LaMelo Ball answered a Dejounte Murray three with a personal burst that ignited a run the Pelicans never recovered from. Jeremiah Fears pulled New Orleans within four points with twelve seconds left, and Jonathan Kuminga closed it out. Nowhere in that sequence is there a documented missed call or anything resembling the kind of officiating error the league has actually acknowledged dogging this Timberwolves team this season. The NBA has admitted, in writing, that officials blew calls late in a Minnesota overtime game against Houston, and separately got calls wrong in a loss to Cleveland. Those are real grievances. Friday in New Orleans doesn't belong on that list, and pretending otherwise just borrows credibility from the games where Minnesota actually got robbed to prop up a finish where it simply won.
What actually happened is more interesting. This is a team playing without Anthony Edwards, who sat out with a knee issue, and without Donte DiVincenzo, who's out with an Achilles problem, and it kept making winning plays. Ayo Dosunmu scored 26. Jaden McDaniels added 23 and closed the door with a block on Fears in the final seconds. LaMelo Ball put up 22 points and eight assists and was the one who flipped the fourth quarter. When Beringer went down, it was Trey Lyles who hauled in a season-high 13 rebounds with three steals and held the frontcourt together alongside Rudy Gobert. It needed a team deeper than its injury report suggests.
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RatingThe pushback worth taking seriously is that this was a legitimately competitive game, one that New Orleans, winners of four straight before Friday, had every chance to finish. Dosunmu's night stands on its own; so does McDaniels'. You don't need a conspiracy about the officials to explain why New Orleans came up short. Zion Williamson managed just 13 points on a night he'd been averaging well above that, Fears and Saddiq Bey kept it alive, and it still wasn't enough, because Minnesota's role players outworked them in the fourth quarter.
There's a broader story underneath this, too. The front office shipped Naz Reid to Charlotte for LaMelo Ball, and on nights like this, with Ball igniting the decisive run and Dosunmu, acquired separately and re-signed over the summer, leading the team in scoring, that trade looks like exactly the upgrade Minnesota needed at backcourt depth. It required the players Minnesota got back to produce, and through this stretch they have.
RTGMinnesota is 7-3 and 2-0 in NBA Cup group play as of this result, which is worth exactly as much as any nine-or-ten-game stretch and no more. The pattern matters more than the record: this team keeps finding ways to win without its best player, and it did it again Friday while absorbing an injury to its own rookie. Stop giving the officials credit they didn't earn. This team doesn't need the help.
