Anthony Edwards had to be helped to the locker room tonight after Kevin Durant accidentally elbowed him in the first half. While he did manage to return to the game in the second half, this moment seemed to light a fire inside the Minnesota Timberwolves. Their head coach, Chris Finch, thinks that sometimes, this kind of animosity can be good– something one of his players agrees with, too.

The game between the Wolves and the Suns saw intense action. The first quarter may have been marred by the collision between KD and Anthony Edwards. But both teams turned it on in the second half to bring the game to an exciting conclusion. The T-Wolves in particular looked amazing and here’s what Chris Finch said about that.

“Some bad blood often comes in, and it becomes a little bit more personal. And certainly, I know some of our guys take it that way. And we see it in the results, but every game has gotta be personal in regards to what we’re trying to do here, so. But yeah…I think familiarity certainly breeds some of that,” revealed Finch.

Facing each other in the playoffs means that teams are very well-acquainted with each other. And we’ve all heard the adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” haven’t we? So it stands to reason that the T-Wolves did take this game a little personally; especially after what happened between Anthony Edwards and Kevin Durant. And it paid off handsomely for them tonight!

In that vein, one of the T-Wolves’ biggest stars and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, Rudy Gobert, found himself in agreement with his head coach. Moreover, he had a message for his teammates. So let’s get into that next.

Rudy Gobert sends a message to the Minnesota Timberwolves locker room

We saw the Timberwolves get into a rhythm early in tonight’s game. Their energy and play peaked soon after in the second half. And if they want to make a deep run in the postseason, they will need to tap into this at will. And Rudy Gobert is aware of this, he even acknowledged it to the media and explained why it happened in the first place. In doing so, he inadvertently ended up echoing his head coach’s sentiments.

“It’s kinda like we know what it looks like, but we play at our peak when we have the level of almost fear. A little bit of fear, a little bit of urgency, you know, that kind of, like, survival instinct, when we play with that, you know, really, really good. And, you know, there’s no one that we cannot beat, you know, when we play that way,” said Gobert. While the words he used were different, both he and Finch said the same thing. The T-Wolves are at their best when the game becomes personal to them and they find the sense of urgency to go into overdrive on the court.

But Rudy also revealed what his teammates need to do to win games in light of this. “It’s about finding a way to having that every night,” added Gobert. And the message from Gobert is clear. The T-Wolves need to make it a habit to play as genetically as they did against the Phoenix Suns. “It’s really about having that that awareness and that mental toughness to become try to be consistent, and play the right way for the for the for the forty eight minutes,”  Rudy later opined. 

And it’ll behoove his teammates to listen to him. After all, the T-Wolves have a lot of talent among their ranks. But they’ve awfully inconsistent in the last few years. Perhaps if they listen to their coach and Rudy Gobert’s words, winning will come more easily to them. But only time will tell if that happens!