Timberwolves will need repeat performances from D'Angelo Russell, defense in playoffs

With less than five minutes remaining and the Timberwolves down 95-94, D'Angelo Russell got the ball from Malik Beasley and headed down the right side of the court.

Russell seemed to have his mind made up — he was going to shoot a pull-up three. The point guard stopped a step beyond the three-point line on the right wing, gave himself enough room to shoot over Marcus Morris Sr. and drained the shot to give the Wolves a lead they would not relinquish in the 109-104 victory over the Clippers.

It's a shot Russell, who scored 29 on Tuesday, takes a decent amount but doesn't always make. He made it at the right time as the Wolves won a play-in game to earn the Western Conference seventh seed for the playoffs, which start Saturday in Memphis.

"He hadn't made that pull-up three in a long time, but we never really told him to not take it, and we wanted him to stay confident," coach Chris Finch said. "He actually surprised me a little bit that he took it."

While the Wolves crowd went bonkers with every shot Russell and Anthony Edwards made — and everybody couldn't hold in their joy at the final buzzer, much to the chagrin of some on social media — the Wolves defense was the quiet storm that led to victory.

They kept that lead Russell gave them because the Wolves defense clamped down the rest of the night. While Los Angeles shot 46% from three-point range, the Wolves held them to a lower percentage inside the arc (42%) and limited them to only nine points after Russell's big three. Jaden McDaniels, Patrick Beverley and Jarred Vanderbilt made life as difficult as possible for Paul George and Reggie Jackson.

That final stretch showed what can happen when two aspects of this Wolves team show up that aren't always a given: Russell's shot-making and the defense.

Russell entered the game shooting 33% on pull-up shots from three-point range, according to data on NBA.com. That helped sink his three-point percentage to 34%, the second-lowest total of his seven-year career.

There are nights the Wolves don't need Russell to score much and he can simply be a distributor. There are nights they need points from him and he rises to the occasion. There are other nights that doesn't happen. Littered among Russell's boxscores are lines such as 2-for-11, 3-for-12, and 3-for-15 from the field. More often than not, those games also have an "L" beside them. He was 10-for-18 on Tuesday — with a "W."

When Russell shoots well, the Wolves can be hard to beat, even on a night when All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns fouls out with over seven minutes remaining and didn't make a huge imprint on the scoreboard (11 points, five rebounds).

"You think about all the shots you're going to take and make. You dream about it, but then when you get out there, it might not go that way, and it's what you're going to do next?" Russell said. "Obviously shots don't fall every game, so how are you going to impact winning now? I tried to control that effort throughout the whole season, if it was defensively, if it was coaching guys, it was still trying to impact winning even if the shot's not falling."

Defense always helps when shots aren't falling, and Finch credited the defense with the victory.

"[Tuesday] was all about the defense. It was outstanding," Finch said. "Executed the game plan to perfection. We were the more physical team, and that's what we set out to be."

The Wolves started the season strong on that end of the floor and hit some bumps and inconsistency as they tried to weave more schemes into their repertoire. Their on-ball defense hasn't always been successful, and that can lead to breakdowns across the floor.

That wasn't the case Tuesday.

"Our group's been up and down. We want to guard some nights. Some nights we don't," Russell said. "But when we do, we impact the game, and offense is just two times easier than it is when we're not guarding. … Teams have trouble scoring on us if we come ready to play."

Being ready to play might not be good enough to carry them through a playoff series against the No. 2-seeded Grizzlies. They will likely need all aspects of their team to click. Two of them got back on track Tuesday.