The Timberwolves are finally done waiting for the playoffs

The Minnesota Timberwolves and their fans waited. They waited through the Kevin Garnett trade, and the Kevin Love trade, and even the awful Brandon Roy trade. They waited, and watched, while Garnett won a championship in Boston. They waited through eight coaches, more than a dozen lottery picks, and the shame of picking two point guards over Stephen Curry. They waited through two presidencies and a dozen social media platforms. They waited while Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins hinted at postseason hopes once again. They waited 13 years.

The Timberwolves are playoff bound. The wait is over.

It happened on Wednesday, the final day of the regular season, in a win-or-go-hope game against the Denver Nuggets. The Timberwolves just barely hung on in the 112-106 victory, one that took an overtime period and so many nerves. In the end, Jimmy Butler led the way — the offseason addition brought to the team to do exactly this.

We thought Minnesota’s return to the postseason might be more triumphant. It looked like that, and at times this season, the Timberwolves were aligned with much higher playoff seeding and even home court advantage. But when you’ve spent 13 years away from postseason success, there is no qualifiers on how sweet it is to be back. It accomplished the one thing that the late Flip Saunders, who tragically passed away three years ago, returned to Minnesota to accomplish.

“We’ve been at it for a long time,” Andrew Wiggins said afterwards. “This is what Flip first wanted when I came here, it was all about the playoffs, making the playoffs, and we’re finally there now. I know he’s up there proud and I know everyone in Minnesota is happy.”

Minnesota will play in the NBA postseason. That, more than anything, was the dragon that the team demanded be slain this season. That’s what Wednesday accomplished, and why all the noise around it can be tuned out, at least for a minute.

Let’s say it again, once more for good measure: Minnesota will play in the NBA postseason. It’s been 13 years. We can afford to write that twice.

The game that put them into the postseason was a beautiful, ridiculous mess. Fitting, really. How else could it have played it?

Minnesota’s winner-take-all game was the first in the league since 1997. The sloppiness, and the nerves, were bound to accompany a situation like this. Both teams are loaded with younger players, ones who have never been to the postseason, and Wednesday thrust them into a situation even more stressful than a typical Game 1. It’s no surprise that they were all a little bit rattled.

There were bad moments from the Timberwolves, like having Jeff Teague pound the ball repeatedly in the final few minutes while Karl-Anthony Towns disappeared from the offense. (This has been a reoccurring theme.) It was baffling that their desperation shot with two seconds left in regulation was a Jamal Crawford flip from 40-plus feet. But Denver had these same errors, and these same coaching mishaps. They were carried by their stars — 79 of their 106 points came from three players — and dragged down by everyone else.

That’s why Minnesota won: their role players did more. Tyus Jones only hit one three and dished three assists, but he wasn’t asked to do anything else. Jamal Crawford couldn’t hit shots, but he recorded four dimes to make up for it. Most importantly, Taj Gibson did enormous yeoman’s work down the stretch shutting down Denver’s star. Nikola Jokic had succeeded early on in the post, and so Nuggets coach Mike Malone kept calling them, even as Gibson absolutely swallowed Jokic every time that happened in the final quarter and overtime period.

Minnesota’s reward for a playoff berth is the No. 1 seeded Houston Rockets. That’s not an inviting matchup under any circumstances. But it will be at least four games more than the Timberwolves have experienced in the past decade, and that should be celebrated.

This is a big moment for the Timberwolves. No matter what, they’re damn sure done waiting.