For a full three quarters, the road weary Warriors spun a web of despair around the aggression and production of the Minnesota Timberwolves. This was the fourth game in five days and as the wall loomed, they needed a boost in the worst way.
Down 10 entering the fourth quarter, the Warriors got it. They discovered a small reservoir of energy, just enough to power a 116-108 victory Sunday evening at Target Center.
“We were definitely fighting, fighting an uphill battle,” Kevin Durant told reporters in Minneapolis.
“Let’s not fool ourselves,” Draymond Green said. “We played a great 12 minutes, sparked by our second unit, which played nine of those 12 minutes. And that’s what gave us this win.”
Opening the fourth with Stephen Curry and Green on the bench, as usual, the Warriors reeled off a 25-4 run in less than seven minutes, taking a 103-92 lead with 5:08 remaining. Minnesota got no closer than six after that.
Each of the five Warriors who opened the quarter – David West, Andre Iguodala, Klay Thompson, Shaun Livingston and Durant – finished plus-18 for the quarter. Thompson scored 14 of his game-high 30 points in the fourth, while Durant overcame a 3-of-16 start from the field to go 3-of-5 when it counted, delivering 9 points in the quarter.
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“It started with Andre, Shaun and D-West just bringing great energy in that fourth quarter,” Thompson said. “We were down 10, but we didn’t let that deflate us. Twelve minutes is a long time for this team. It started with the defense. When we’re switching, playing with great force and getting the ball off the glass and running the break, we’re near impossible to stop.”
Coach Steve Kerr had implored his team to put together three or four consecutive defensive stops, figuring it would spark the offense. By shutting out Minnesota on six of its first seven possessions, the Warriors were back in the game.
“It was our best defensive stretch,” Kerr said. “I didn’t think our defense was any good at all for all three quarters. We were a step late on rotations, we weren’t boxing out, and we were getting killed on the glass. So we needed to find a group that could do it.
“We had a lot of length that helped us on the glass. We had some deflections, Shaun and Andre are both just so smart, David came in and was brilliant, so, it’s just a group that kind of figured some things out and made some stops and got out and got some transition points. It got us going, that was a key point of the whole game obviously.”
Minnesota, which outscored the Warriors 30-18 in the third quarter, took a 38-20 blasting in the fourth. The Warriors (21-4) limited the Timberwolves to 36.8-percent shooting, while forcing five turnovers.
It was quite a feat, considering the Warriors arrived in Minneapolis in the wee hours, coming off maybe their worst game of the season on Saturday night in Memphis. They managed to extend to 111 the number of games without back-to-back losses.
“It’s one of the most impressive streaks that I’ve ever seen, to go that long, 111,” Kerr said. “It’s a lot of games, the schedule catches up to you often in this league and it’s kind of catching up to us right now. This was our fourth in five nights, fifth in seven after New Orleans (on Tuesday). It’s a lot of travel.”
For most of the night, it showed. Minnesota (6-18) through three quarters was routing the Warriors in the hustle stats, taking an advantage at the free throw line (30 to 19) and in rebounding (42-26).
They made those numbers insignificant with a brilliant closeout.
Green, ever the driving force, pointed out that the team’s ability to focus over crucial stretches of a game is key to avoiding successive losses. Not until the fourth quarter did it come. That’s not good enough.
“We’ve still got to focus on doing that for 48 minutes,” Green said, “which we did not do tonight.”
