MINNEAPOLIS — The lineup that Chris Finch put on the floor to start the fourth quarter on Sunday night against San Antonio had played a grand total of 15 minutes together this season.
The Wolves were down by four points to the upstart Spurs, and they needed a jolt. For much of this season, Finch has started the fourth quarter building a lineup around the Mike Conley-Rudy Gobert pick-and-roll pairing, leaning on the two oldest players in the rotation to provide stability and good decision-making on both ends.
That just wasn’t working against the Spurs, who were getting wherever they wanted to go with De’Aaron Fox, Dylan Harper and Devin Vassell dissecting the Wolves defense.
With Minnesota trailing by four points to start the final quarter, Finch instead leaned into his offense. He put Conley out there with Donte DiVincenzo, Jaden McDaniels, Julius Randle and Naz Reid. The edict was simple: move the ball on offense and your feet on defense.
“We had to change up something,” Finch said. “They just were too comfortable getting to the midrange jumper, too comfortable getting to the rim. We just had to be able to slow them down somehow, and then that team caught an offensive rhythm.”
What followed was the best six minutes of the Timberwolves’ season, a gorgeous combination of ball movement, cutting and lights-out shooting on offense, along with hustle, grit and determination on defense. The Wolves blitzed San Antonio with a 21-7 run, turning a 93-89 deficit into a 110-100 advantage, capped by a dime-filled possession that ended with a 3-pointer from Conley in the corner.
MINNESOTA MIKE!!!! pic.twitter.com/Q4JbNhrOQf
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) December 1, 2025
The Wolves rode that surge to a 125-112 victory, giving them a sweep of their home back-to-back this weekend against the Celtics and Spurs, their first two victories over teams with a winning record this season.
Anthony Edwards scored 32 points on 13-for-18 shooting, the 102nd time in his career that he has scored at least 30 in a game. That moved him past Karl-Anthony Towns (101) for the most in franchise history. His shot-making was big in this game, keeping the Wolves from falling too far behind in the first three quarters. But it was that fourth-quarter unit that won the day for Minnesota.
Randle had 22 points, 12 assists, six rebounds and was a plus-30 in 36 minutes. DiVincenzo had 18 points, five rebounds and four assists and went 4 for 9 from 3-point range. McDaniels scored seven of his 13 points in the fourth and was the lynchpin of a zone defense that held San Antonio to 19 points in the quarter. The Wolves were 14 for 21 (67 percent) from the field and 7 for 14 from 3 (50 percent) in the fourth, racking up 12 assists along the way.
“We’re a hard team to beat when we’re all involved, and it shows,” said Reid, who scored eight of his 15 points in a fourth quarter in which the Wolves outscored the Spurs by 20 points with him on the floor. “If we could do that more consistently, we’re going to be a really, really hard team to beat. It’s fun, especially when you’re doing it at home, getting the crowd involved and all that good stuff. It’s fun basketball.”
The Timberwolves (12-8) have been searching for consistency through these first 20 games. They started the season trying to reclaim their status as one of the best defensive teams in the league, but that has been a difficult pursuit. That is what made their success on that end in the fourth quarter so surprising.
Minnesota out-rebounded San Antonio 13-6, held the Spurs to 33 percent shooting and only allowed one offensive board, a season-long issue.
“I thought Jaden did a phenomenal job in the middle of the zone there, taking all the guys that were coming downhill and directing traffic,” Finch said. “We rebounded really well out of it. We flew around and contested well.”
With Victor Wembanyama out with a strained calf and Stephon Castle missing because of a strained hip flexor, the Spurs just didn’t have enough defenders on the floor to handle the suddenly fluid Minnesota attack. But this was no gimme against a short-handed team. San Antonio had won five of the six games it played since Wembanyama went down, including a win in Denver on Friday night.
Fox has long been a Wolves killer, and he appeared on his way to another huge night when he put up 19 points on 8-for-11 shooting in the first half. He and Harper were getting to the rim at will, even with Gobert on the floor. The Spurs led by as many as nine points in the third quarter, and things weren’t looking great when Finch took Gobert out with five minutes to go in the period for his normal rest.
Gobert is a polarizing player because of his offensive limitations, but there is no discounting the impact he has had since he arrived in Minnesota in 2022, including this season. In the first 19 games this season, the Wolves were 20.3 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor than when he sat. That was the second-best mark in the league among players who have played at least 400 minutes, just behind Giannis Antetokounmpo (21.0).
The Wolves have been torched when Gobert sits, with the frontcourt pairing of Reid and Randle struggling mightily to protect the rim. The pairing had a 126.2 defensive rating in non-garbage time minutes, per Cleaning The Glass, prior to Sunday night. With Wembanyama out, the Spurs did not have a big man who could make the Wolves pay for playing smaller. Luke Kornet took just one shot in 24 minutes on the floor and Kelly Olynyk scored seven points in his 13:31.
The matchup prompted Finch to keep Gobert on the bench for the final 17 minutes of the game. The Spurs scored 52 points in the paint in the first three quarters, which gave Finch the license to try something different since Gobert was not succeeding in shutting that water off, as he normally does.
“We’ve always said we’re going to play the lineups that work,” Finch said. “And 90 percent of those times Rudy’s driving a lot of great defense and a lot of good things.”
This was not the night for him, and Finch’s willingness to sit one of his most high-profile players was a gamble that paid off in a big way. Finch said before the game that he has spent most of this first quarter of the season experimenting with lineup combinations, trying different things out to see what works and what doesn’t. It has resulted in some ugly losses and plenty of angst in the fan base about where the two-time Western Conference finalists are headed.
But Finch pushed the right buttons on Sunday night. One of the troubles the Wolves have faced offensively this season is stagnancy, a symptom of Edwards and Randle over-dribbling the ball late into the shot clock. In constructing the lineup that swung the game in their favor, Finch looked to put together a five-man group that he thought would be immune to the stickiness that can often plague teams in close fourth quarters.
The ball zipped around the court, creating wide open looks from 3 and easy scores at the basket. Randle was a maestro, slicing and dicing the Spurs defense with seven assists in the fourth quarter alone. He has been in a funk of late, not shooting the ball well from 3 and turning the ball over 17 times in the previous four games.
He met with Finch after practice on Friday to talk through his struggles, and the coach who has backed him more than any other he has had encouraged him to try to relax and let the game come to him.
“Not fighting the game, making the play that’s in front of me,” Randle said. “It’s easy from there.”
Finch also vowed to put him more at the center of their offense. Edwards has been on a brilliant scoring run, but Finch knows that Randle’s passing and magnetism makes life so much easier for their face of the franchise.
“His connection with Ant, we’ve got to bring that back to life,” Finch said on Friday.
It was there in the fourth quarter. Edwards beamed on the bench while he watched that five-man unit carve up the Spurs. When he re-entered the game with a 10-point lead, he didn’t force anything. He took two shots, moved the ball and dialed up the defense on Harper and Fox. The lead grew to as many as 16 points and never got close to the clutch time that has been so problematic for the Wolves this season.
“Obviously with Ant and Ju, they get theirs,” Reid said. “But being able to move the ball and the things they did tonight while doing that, just to alleviate some of the pressure on them was huge.”
another Slim slam for ya pic.twitter.com/cb8oRFSzMe
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) December 1, 2025
Can the Wolves play small, rely on the zone defense and expect to hit 50 percent of their 3s every night? No. There will be plenty of nights where they need Gobert’s interior defense and rebounding or Edwards’ one-on-one bucket-getting.
But the joy with which they played was palpable. The flow in their offense was exceptional. The sweat equity on defense was as good as it has been all season. A team that has been in search of an identity all season long may have just gotten a glimpse of it.