Game Preview #23 – Timberwolves vs. Clippers

Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Los Angeles Clippers
Date: December 6th, 2025
Time: 7:00 PM CST
Location: Target Center
Television Coverage: FanDuel Sports Network – North
Radio Coverage: Wolves App, iHeart Radio

There’s a very specific kind of Timberwolves optimism that should probably come with a warning label.

On one hand: four-game winning streak, baby! After that brutal three-game skid to Phoenix, Sacramento, and OKC, the Wolves have finally strung together some good vibes. They beat a short-handed but still legit Boston Celtics team to finally notch their first win of the year against a team with a winning record. They followed that up by taking care of the Spurs (also missing their top guys, but still technically above .500). Then they went down to New Orleans, grabbed two wins in three nights, and came home 4–0 since the mini-collapse tour.

On the other hand: if you actually watched those Pelicans games, you probably aged six years.

Game 1 in the Big Easy required last-minute heroics just to get to overtime. The Wolves spent three quarters playing like they’d been given a doctor’s note excusing them from defensive activity, spotted the worst team in the league 103 points through three quarters, and needed an Anthony Edwards cape moment to survive. Game 2 looked like a comfortable blowout on the final scoreline… but if you lived through it in real time, you saw them dust off the old “play with your food” routine, cough up a double-digit lead, trail in the third, then finally slam the door once Ant checked back in after foul trouble and the starters decided to act like grown-ups.

So yeah: four straight wins, but two of them came against a Celtics team missing Tatum and a Spurs team missing Wemby and Castle. The other two required varying shades of drama against the team currently living in the Western Conference basement. This Minnesota team isn’t exactly the 2017 Warriors yet.

Still, context matters. Anthony Edwards lost time early in the year with that hamstring injury and was clearly not himself in spots. The Wolves have handed away two games with boneheaded late-game execution against Phoenix and Sacramento. They dropped two each to the Lakers and Nuggets, the very teams they’re trying to chase down in the standings. And yet… they’re still not that far off from the coveted 2–3 seeds out West.

Catching OKC at this point probably requires some kind of black-swan event, like a Shai/Jalen/Chet group alien abduction, but getting to that 2 or 3 spot and, more importantly, staying on the opposite side of the bracket from the Thunder in April? That’s absolutely still on the table. If the Wolves want to get there, this is the stretch where they have to act like it.

The schedule between now and December 19th, when OKC comes to Target Center for Round 2, is tailor-made for a run. You get the Clippers at home. Then Phoenix rolls back into town for what should be a highly cathartic revenge game. Then, while everyone else is playing for that shiny in-season tournament trophy you’re not invited to, you get a weird little reset. After that, it’s at Golden State, home for Sacramento, home for Memphis. That’s five very winnable games lined up in a row. If you’re being greedy, you’re already doing the math: win all five and you walk into the Thunder game on a nine-game heater with your season narrative flipped on its head.

But that’s where the Timberwolves Warning Label kicks in: you can’t fast-forward to OKC.

The only way you get to nine straight is by handling what’s directly in front of you. And what’s directly in front of you is a Clippers team that basically lives at the intersection of Chaos Avenue and Dysfunction Boulevard.

Last spring, the Clippers took Denver to seven games and actually looked like a real basketball team with real continuity and a real ceiling. It felt like they might have one more real run in them. Since then? It’s been a car crash in slow motion. The Kawhi–Balmer summer scandal detonated whatever good will was left. They came out of the offseason looking old, slow, disinterested, and utterly disorganized. The flyers on Bradley Beal has already ended with him out for the year. Kawhi has done his usual “in and out of the lineup” dance. Harden remains elite on one side of the floor and basically a rumor on the other. Chris Paul showed up for the reunion tour, then promptly got cut after locker room conflicts. If you were trying to build a case study on how not to maintain a contender, you’d just splice together Clippers footage from the past eight months.

And now that mess is walking into Target Center. For once, the Wolves are the stable adult in the room.

Minnesota knows dysfunction. We’ve lived dysfunction. But right now? The Wolves have a coherent identity, a legitimate core, and a clear path forward. The Clippers are a half-baked nostalgia act with name recognition and no real direction. That’s why this game can’t be a coin flip. If the Wolves want to be taken seriously as a top-tier Western Conference team, they don’t just need to win this game. They need to handle it.

You’ve won four in a row. You’ve finally beaten a couple of winning teams. You’ve survived your own worst habits. Now comes the part where you prove you’ve learned something.

If the Wolves are going to handle the Clippers and stretch this to five straight, here’s what has to happen.

1. Run Them Into the Ground

The Pelicans just gave the Wolves a real-time reminder of what youth, hustle, and constant pressure can do. Those New Orleans kids turned both games into track meets and forced Minnesota to work way harder than they should have. Now the Wolves get to flip that script.

Nobody on the Clippers wants this to be a 48-minute sprint. That’s not where Kawhi is at this stage. It’s not where Harden has been for a while. It’s definitely not how the corpse of this roster wants to play. The Wolves aren’t exactly the youngest team in the league, but between Ant, McDaniels, Clark, TSJ, DDV, and Naz running the floor, they have fresher legs and more juice than this L.A. group.

Minnesota should treat this like a conditioning drill. Push every rebound. Run off every miss. Punish them in transition. Make Harden and Kawhi actually bend their knees on defense. The more the game turns into a tempo war, the more Minnesota’s athleticism and depth become the deciding factor.

If the Wolves come out aggressive by hunting early offense, turning stops into fast breaks, and forcing the Clippers to chase, this can look a lot more like a professional dismantling and a lot less like another “why is this a two-point game with three minutes left?” heart attack.

2. Handle Pressure Like a Real Contender

If the New Orleans series revealed one uncomfortable truth, it’s this: when teams decide to crank up the heat, Minnesota can look pretty shaky handling the ball.

The Pelicans basically went full chaos mode with traps, pressure, and aggressive doubles on Ant, and the Wolves responded with exactly the kind of turnovers, rushed passes, and panicky decisions you’d expect from a team without a steady primary ball handler on the floor. Even with Conley, things can get dicey when opponents sell out to get the ball out of Edwards’ hands.

Ty Lue is too smart not to see that on film. Yes, the Clippers are older and may not have the legs to full-court press like the Pels did. But you can bet they’ll test Minnesota’s composure by sending extra bodies at Ant, loading up on his drives, and daring the Wolves to beat them with quick, correct reads.

That means Edwards can’t dribble into dead ends. Julius can’t go into “pound the air out of the ball” mode. The wings can’t stand there watching the double team and hoping for a bailout whistle.

If Minnesota wants to act like an actual contender, this is where it starts: recognizing traps early, moving the ball before the pressure arrives, making the simple pass, and turning doubles into open threes or cuts instead of live-ball turnovers. You can’t hand this Clippers team free runway in transition. Their halfcourt offense may be clunky, but they still have enough shotmaking to punish every careless mistake.

3. Don’t Let Kawhi and Harden Beat You

For all the dysfunction, for all the drama, on any given night, Kawhi Leonard and James Harden can still cook you if you let them feel too comfortable.

This is where the Wolves’ perimeter arsenal has to matter. Jaden McDaniels, Jalen Clark, and Anthony Edwards give Minnesota the rare ability to throw multiple elite or borderline-elite defenders at the perimeter. That has to be the identity in this game.

McDaniels should get first crack at Kawhi, using his length to contest everything and make every catch a chore. When he’s on the court, Clark can hound Harden, turn his dribble into a negotiation, and try to wear him down physically. Edwards will have to toggle between carrying the offense and taking pride in possessions where he blows up actions defensively.

And behind them? Rudy Gobert lurking at the rim, erasing mistakes and making drives a less appealing option.

If Minnesota contains L.A.’s two headliners, it’s hard to see this version of the Clippers generating enough offense to keep pace for 48 minutes. The goal isn’t to hold them to 8 points each. The goal is to make every bucket feel earned and deny the 15-point swing quarters that these guys can still produce.

4. Let Ant and Julius Be the Better Duo

If you’re playing pickup in 2025 and someone says, “You get Ant and Julius or you get Kawhi and Harden,” you’re not hesitating. You’re rolling with the Wolves’ pair.

Edwards and Randle should be the better duo at this stage. Younger, fresher, more versatile, more locked-in. But New Orleans was a reminder that “should be” and “actually are” can be two different things depending on the night.

In the first Pelicans game, Randle basically took the first four quarters off offensively before waking up in overtime. In game two, Edwards, who had been on a career heater, snapped his 30+ point run with a pretty pedestrian outing. The Wolves win that New Orleans trip a lot more comfortably if both guys are humming at the same time.

Back at Target Center, against an opponent this fragile, there’s really no excuse.

The Wolves need Edwards attacking downhill, getting to the rim, putting the Clippers in early foul trouble, and sprinkling in just enough threes to keep the defense honest. They need him to strike that balance between killer scorer and willing passer, especially if L.A. starts sending extra bodies his way.

They need Randle to be the best version of himself – the bully ball finisher who also acts as a second initiator, reading help, kicking to shooters, and keeping the ball hopping. Not the guy who dribbles into crowds and invites live-ball turnovers.

When Ant and Julius are synced up, the Wolves’ offense looks like something out of a Western Conference Finals highlight reel. When they’re out of rhythm, you get those dead possessions that let bad teams hang around. Against this Clippers team, the Wolves’ stars should dictate the tone. Full stop.

Bottom Line: No Excuses, No Drama

This is exactly the type of game this franchise used to lose. Opponent in chaos. National narrative leaning your way. Schedule softening. A big showdown with Phoenix looming. It has all the makings of a classic “we didn’t take them seriously” letdown.

That version of the Timberwolves doesn’t get the 2 or 3 seed. That version ends up back in the play-in, tired, annoyed, having to convince themselves for the third straight year that “we can beat anybody in a series if we just get there.”

The version that belongs on the contender tier? That team wins this game by just acting like a professional basketball team. They take advantage of old legs. They don’t turn the ball over 20 times. They use their defensive weapons. Their stars outplay L.A.’s stars. They treat the Clippers like what they are right now: a name brand with a clearance-rack soul.

Four in a row is nice. Five in a row starts to feel like something. You want OKC on December 19th to mean something bigger than “here’s another measuring stick we might fail to live up to”? It starts with nights like this.

Go clip the Clippers. Then we can start talking about what this run really means.

Game Preview #23 – Timberwolves vs. Clippers

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