Chance Formore

Minnesota Timberwolves vs OKC Thunder Game 1 WCF 2025

20 May 2025

I’m thinking Oklahoma City Thunder can win this series in 6 games. Minnesota Timberwolves scoring ability is somewhat questionable in my opinion. The Thunder defense can cause problems for top heavy scoring teams.

NBA officials seem to love the Thunder also. That allows them to be more aggressive on the defensive side of the ball. I don’t wanna throw shade to hard on the Thunder. They are without doubt the most in sync defense in the NBA all year to me.

First quarter

Anthony Edwards MInnesota G receives an unnecessary technical foul for tossing the ball at Shai Gilgeous-Alexander OKC G, while he’s laying on the court. This happened just four minutes into the game. The Timberwolves feed of his energy and this is not the way to start the series.

Minnesota scored 13 points of turnovers and this help them finished the quarter with 23 points to OKC 20 points.

second quarter

Julius Randle started heating up hitting a couple of 3 pointers. That was a good thing since Anthony Edwards went back to the locker room after tweaking his ankle again. He missed 5 minutes of play time, reentering the game with 7 minutes to go in the quarter.

Minnesota defense somewhat slowed down the Thunder offense this quarter. OKC’s guard SGA had more points from free throw attempts 7-9 and only 4 points from the field goals 2-13.

Minnesota finished the half up by 4 points.

Third Quarter

OKC came out running the offense through Jalen Williams instead of Shai that help him get off more uncontested shots. This led to a 10-0 run by the Thunder. Anthony Edwards started taking hero shots. This helped OKC take and extend the lead and it got SGA activated.

Edwards is only 23 years old and has all the talent in the world. Great talent hinders most young players like him from understanding what the team’s needs. Minnesota doesn’t need him to be Bat-Man. They need him to be more cerebral like Professor X and use his teammates as an extension of himself.

Shai is giving him the example, his game was off so he starting dishing the rock to the team. That led to them winning the quarter 31-18.

fourth quarter

Fourth quarter was just an extension of the 3rd. OKC made it look easy in the second half. Minnesota look like they gave up early which is a bad sign for the series. I hope I’m wrong and fans get better games in the Western conference finals.