Anthony Edwards didn't play Thursday night. Minnesota beat Dallas anyway, 133-94, the ugliest loss the Mavericks have taken all season. That alone should end any debate about whether this Timberwolves team is for real right now.
Look at who did the damage. LaMelo Ball ran the show with 22 points and a season-high nine assists. Bones Hyland came off the bench and dropped 24 on 7-for-10 shooting. Ayo Dosunmu added 18. Jaden McDaniels and Jonathan Kuminga combined for 30 points and 17 rebounds. Rookie big man Joan Beringer put up 13 points and nine rebounds off the bench, one board shy of a double-double, and Rudy Gobert added 9 and 6 without needing to do much heavy lifting. None of those names is Edwards, and Minnesota still cruised.
The shooting numbers back it up. Minnesota hit 57.8% from the field and 46.9% from three. Dallas shot 37.2% and 27.1% from deep. At one point in the fourth quarter the lead ballooned to 44. The Timberwolves scored 74 points in the paint alone. You only do that to an NBA roster that had won three straight games coming in if you're the far better team, with enough bodies that losing your franchise player for a night barely moves the needle.
Rating
RatingThere were still some careless giveaways in stretches, the kind of mistakes that get ignored in a 39-point win and get punished in a tight one. That's real, but it's beside the point here. A team that can win by 39 while playing loose with the ball doesn't deserve grief over turnovers. Save that complaint for a team that's actually struggling. Minnesota is 9-3 and has won five straight.
This fits a pattern. Minnesota opened the season by winning its first three games by at least 20 points, and the Timberwolves came into Thursday ranked first in the league defensively. This team is deep enough to lose its best player and still put three guys up for 18-plus points without blinking.
RTGDallas has its own problems to sort through. Cooper Flagg, who'd dropped 43 in his last outing, was held to 12. Kyrie Irving managed just 10. Dusty May spent his postgame press conference talking about Minnesota's defense before anyone even asked him a question. Zaccharie Risacher's 22 off the bench was the only thing Dallas can point to as a positive, in a loss where the final margin never got close to respectable.
Minnesota is five games into a streak, twelve games into an 82-game season, so nobody should be printing banners yet. But a team that wins by 39 without its best player on the floor has real depth. The rest of the league should take that seriously. Right now the Timberwolves look dangerous even without Anthony Edwards, and everyone chasing them should be nervous.
