The Minnesota Timberwolves were without Donte DiVincenzo and Ayo Dosunmu, and their mercurial star Anthony Edwards (who played just 25 minutes), was severely hobbled. Yet, they managed to escape Game 1 with a road victory over the heavily favored San Antonio Spurs and their prodigious big man.

At a glance, a two-point victory doesn’t seem like a dominant showing. But if you dig a little deeper, you will see that the Timberwolves may have put together the best game plan for dealing with Victor Wembanyama that we’ve seen yet.

A Change In X-Factor

In the first round, Rudy Gobert’s blend of size, strength, and rim protection made him the perfect foil to Nikola Jokic. However, styles make fights, and Gobert’s limitations (the inability to shoot outside the paint) make it easier for Wembanyama to do what he does best (swat everything in sight). Through the first three quarters of the game, the Timberwolves never eclipsed the 100.0 mark in offensive rating with Gobert playing nearly 30 of 36 possible minutes.

So, head coach Chris Finch decided to pivot away from Gobert in the fourth quarter and focus on lineups featuring Julius Randle and Naz Reid at the four and five spot. Both Randle and Reid are threats threes or initiate offense from the perimeter, meaning there was no obvious weak link for Wembanyama to sag off of.

This two-play sequence sums it up best. In the first clip, Wembanyama leaves Reid to help on the Jaden McDaniels drive, which leaves him vulnerable for a skip pass to the corner and open three. A few possessions later, McDaniels is driving again, Wembanyama thinks about helping, so McDaniels glances at the corner, Wembanyama remembers what happened last time and doesn’t commit to contesting the shot at the rim, and it is a foul and free throws for the Timberwolves’ forward.

In the fourth quarter, the Timberwolves had a 145.5 offensive rating with Reid on the floor. This follows a season-long trend of Minnesota giving the Spurs fits in his minutes. During the regular season, the Timberwolves had a +23 plus-minus against the Spurs in Reid’s time on the floor.

The Wembanyama Rules

Of course, Wembanyama is too good and too otherworldly to have his value diminished simply by playing a center who can knock down some threes. This isn’t the first time teams have tried to using small ball to keep Wembanyama outside of the paint. The Spurs made minor tweaks to this strategy in real time (like moving Wembanyama to Terrence Shannon Jr.). That’s why a lot of credit needs to go out to Randle for sensing these changes in real time and coming up with a counter for their counter.

One thing you can do to keep Wembanyama from contesting a shot is having the person guard him seal him to make it impossible for him to rotate over.

This next play is one of my favorite sequences of the night. Like we said, the Spurs moved Wembanyama from Reid to Shannon. Randle sees Shannon is driving on the side he is trying to post up in, so he seals his own man to create an obstacle that keeps Wembanyama from being able to recover and swat the shot. Randle screening his own man rather than Wembanyama makes a huge difference here as it takes both defenders out of the play and takes away the possibility of the action being neutralized by a switch.

Make The Giant A Shooter

The Timberwolves had some success offensively in the fourth quarter, but, at the end of the day, Wembanyama still set a playoff record for blocked shots and held them to an archaic 97.6 offensive rating in his minutes. Just as was the case agains the Denver Nuggets, where this game was really won was on the defensive end of the floor. Minnesota held San Antonio over ten points below (106.3) their first round offensive rating (116.6), and they limited Wembanyama – a 25 PPG scorer in the regular season – to 11 points on 5-for-17 shooting from the floor.

Their main point of emphasis was to take Wembanyama away as a roller and putback finisher. In the regular season, Wembanyama was in the 98th percentile in rim attempts per 75 possessions, but in Game 1, he was relegated to just six shots at the basket, despite playing 11 more minutes than he normally does (per Dunks & Threes).

The Timberwolves defended Wembanyama pick-and-rolls in drop coverage. This tactic usually involves the screener defender playing two guys at once. But in this version of it, the screener defender positioned themselves closer to the rolling Wembanyama and trusted his teammate (the screen navigator) to handle the ball handler themselves. Minnesota also had their backside defender shift over to provide some supplementary aid. This forced Wembanyama to pop after setting a screen rather than stampede down the lane.

On plays where Wembanyama was camped in the dunker spot, instead of having his man rotate to the low man position, that player would stay on the 7’4 giant to preemptively box him out and keep him off the offensive glass (Wembanyama only had two offensive rebounds). Again, this leaves the onus on the person defending the driver to keep the ball in front of him because he isn’t getting any reinforcements at the rim.

Another part of all of this that needs to be addressed is that the Timberwolves are a unique team in that they can play 5-out on offense while still having the size to keep from being destroyed on defense. The guys who guarded Wembanyama in the fourth quarter (Randle, Reid, McDaniels) are all huge and have the ability to bang with Wembanyama.

Of course, it helps when you dare a guy to shoot threes and he doesn’t hit a single one. Wembanyama was 0-for-8 from downtown, despite being a respectable shooter (34.9% from three this year) on good volume (66th percentile). Wembanyama is going to hit more shots moving forward. Heck, he technically only needed to hit one of those eight shots for the Spurs to be the ones up 1-0 right now. His teammates (De’Aaron Fox, Devin Vassell, Stephon Castle, and Dylan Harper) are also good enough to make the Timberwolves pay for trying to guard them on an island.

Still, Game 1 showed us that the Timberwolves have the perfect combination of personnel, gameplan, and savvy veterans to push this Spurs team to the brink, meaning that, even with all their injuries, we are in store for an all-time great second round series.