MINNEAPOLIS – On Sunday night, NBA's Western Conference will make a statement.
We're interesting. We are living proof that everyone should just shut up and play basketball. Look, anything can happen.
On Sunday, the Oklahoma City Thunder will face off against the San Antonio Spurs in what's likely to be the most exciting series of this year's playoffs. It's thrilling as much for what it is – Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook evenly matched against the aging Tim Duncan and Tony Parker – as for the sheer fact that not long ago, this matchup seemed a far-fetched dream.
Three years ago, the Thunder were 23-59. They were terrible. They hadn't reached the playoffs since 2005, and they were banking on a young star with a polo shirt and a backpack to catapult them from mediocrity.
Three years ago, the Spurs made the playoffs but lost in the first round to Dallas, winning only one game. They were two years removed from their most recent championship. Duncan was 33 and battling chronic knee tendonosis, perhaps fading past his prime.
Yet somehow, here they are. The old are not that old, and James Harden's beard isn't the only thing that makes the Thunder appear more mature than their years. These are the upstarts and the senior citizens of sport, one team on a precipitous rise and the other adamantly refusing to admit its time should have passed. It's the best kind of story in sports, and any Timberwolves fans still clutching their Kleenex in some sort of extended mourning for Ricky Rubio's knee should buck up and pay attention.
Watch this series. It might mean something, if not for this year's championship, then at least for next year's Minnesota team.
These are two teams the Timberwolves combined to go 2-4 against this season. But in those six games, the combined score sits at 659-643, an average Timberwolves' point differential of just minus-2.67. Before the fire and brimstone of March 9, Minnesota faced off against the Spurs and the Thunder a combined three times, going 2-1. In those games, the Timberwolves had a positive point differential, outscoring San Antonio and Oklahoma City, 293-279. This was a Timberwolves team hitting its stride, and when it did, it could compete with the best.
So this series, Timberwolves, is your hope. No, this is not to say that because the team at its best competed with the Spurs and the Thunder, it can win. Far from it.
This is not to say that because the Timberwolves are young and promising, they're guaranteed to win. Nor are they destined to lose because they don't have a coach who's led them for 18 years, picking up four championships and boasting a freakishly close relationship with their star.
This is to say, however, that the good stories can win. The Timberwolves were a good story once. They were Rubio and Kevin Love, two stars led by one of the league's most respected coaches in the waning days of his career. They were surprises: Love proving to be not just good but one of the league's best, and Rubio living up to every last iota of hype.
That story beat the Spurs twice. It took the Thunder to double overtime and lost two regulation games by just four and then five points. But back then, there was the temptation to write those wins off. There were excuses, explanations: The Spurs are aging – even their coach admitted it with a "DNP-Old" written next to Duncan's name on a March 25 box score – and their younger players were thought by many to be too young. The Thunder aren't there yet, still on the path to becoming the league's elite.
It was hard to say what wins like the ones over these teams meant in January or even March, but with each Thunder and Spurs victory, the Timberwolves' efforts become that much more legitimate.
At its best, Minnesota beat good teams.
The story of the Timberwolves at their best faded quickly, though, and it was at times tempting to chalk it up as something too good to be true. But don't take that cop-out, not when these two teams, the Thunder and the Spurs, are fighting for a championship berth of which they earned every bit. These are the two best teams in the conference, but this matchup was far from a given. This pairing could have been doomed by youth and age, by the Lakers' pedigree and the Clippers' athleticism. Los Angeles had the chance to squash these far less glamorous pests, but it couldn't. Here they are, the 36th-largest television market and the 45th, towns devoid of celebrities and rife with true fans. David Stern's nightmare is the everyman's dream.
So the Timberwolves will watch. They'll watch because the Thunder are everything they should aspire to. They'll watch because no opponent is past its prime, and youth could still fall to experience. And they'll watch because no matter how much of a flop this season might have become, it proved that they can compete with these teams, the two that have shaken out as the conference's unquestioned best.
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