– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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DALLAS — It took less than four minutes from the start of the game to quickly realize that Luka Doncic was well on his way to cooking another opponent to the tune of a historical stat line. But the Minnesota Timberwolves, on the receiving end of some early Luka Magic, had an ace in the hole. Rather, the Wolves had an ace on their bench: Naz Reid.
Reid nailed seven three-pointers on his way to 27 points, spurring a rousing comeback by the Timberwolves in a 119-101 victory over the Dallas Mavericks inside American Airlines Center on Thursday evening. Karl-Anthony Towns chipped in with 21 points and 17 rebounds as the Timberwolves spotted Dallas an early 15-point lead at 17-2 before taking the lead before halftime and, in the second half, holding the Mavericks to just 41 points in the second half.
Minnesota, who has yet to lose consecutive games this season and came into tonight after a loss in New Orleans on Monday, improves its Western Conference-best record to 18-5, and are a league-best 17-3 since the start of November.
“They refocus fast. I think they are super competitive, staying in the moment,” Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch said. “It’s a long, long season, we know that. But they dial in, they don’t really let one performance bleed into the next. We talked a lot of different ways to be more mature as a team and that was one of them. We would have these headaches and hangover games last year and this is a team that was way more mature. This was just another example of it.”
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Wednesday evening’s game, with all photos taken by Dallas-area photographer Ross James. After clicking on the first photo to enlarge the picture, make sure to press the left and right arrow buttons to scroll through the rest of the pictures. There are 29 pictures in total.
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