Timberwolves fans and players felt like they had the stick in the short run throughout the season. The team is often on the negative side of the mismatch.
That didn’t happen in their 112-110 win over the New York Knicks on Tuesday, according to the NBA’s final two-minute umpire report. Overall, the game was called tough, with an insipid 55 fouls called and 71 free throw attempts.
But it was three missed calls in the last two minutes of the game that the league said were good for Minnesota.
Wolverhampton center Carl-Anthony Towns should have been penalized for two separate fouls, according to the report. The first came around the perimeter, where he hit the arm of Evan Fournier, forcing the defender to turn the ball over.
The second came in a deciding bucket from Towns, giving Minnesota the lead with 29 seconds left in the game. That game ended with Towns hitting a 3-pointer, but it all started, the report says, with Towns grabbing Julius Randle’s arm to get past him.
The final waiver came with 22 seconds left when Wolves defenseman D’Angelo Russell nearly flipped the ball in the frontcourt. The report states that Russell pushed R.J. Barrett due to a dropped ball.
“We’ve had some tough decisions against us,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game, “and we can’t put ourselves in a position where referees are that factor.”
Timberwolves coach Chris Finch believed officials came into the game with the intention of letting the boys play.
“Then the physicality stood up there. I thought the start of the fourth was really key,” Finch said. “We brought a lot of fouls on them early on and that could affect how they defended us the rest of the time.”
HELLO DOMINO?
Immediately after Minnesota’s victory on Tuesday, Towns was shown on television standing next to his father and talking to someone on the phone.
Who was on the other end of the line? It was Timberwolves radio host Alan Horton. Towns gave his post-match interview in an unconventional manner.
“I thought it was Domino,” Townes joked.