The Minnesota Timberwolves will face the Golden State Warriors or Houston Rockets in the semi-final of the West Conference after closing the Los Angeles Lakers with a 103-96 victory in match 5 of their first round series on Wednesday.
The Warriors currently have a 3-2 lead in their best seven series against the Rockets with a chance to close at home at the Chase Center in San Francisco on Friday evening. The Wolves will have to wait at least until then to discover their second round opponent, although there are many reasons to be intrigued by the two potential clashes of the eliminatory series.
Related: 5 things that stood out from the victory of the 4-1 series of Timberwolves against the Lakers
Rockets are a young and rising team like the Wolves who have a deep list and have many challenges. The scenarios for a potential series with the Warriors, well, they write themselves. Jimmy Butler should finally return to the Target Center, while Rudy Gobert and Draymond Green have a lot of history and disdain – we cannot certainly forget the altercation in a game of November 2023 when Green put Gobert in a headache and was then suspended.
Without forgetting that the match would give Anthony Edwards the possibility of ranging not only Kevin Durant, Nikola Jokic, LeBron James and Luka Doncic in the playoffs, but also Steph Curry, and all before Edwards is even 24 years old.
Whatever the story or the team, here is an overview of each of the potential second -round clashes for the Wolves:
The Wolves and Rockets divided the regular season series, Houston winning the last confrontation between the two teams on February 21, although Minnesota was without Rudy Gobert, Julius Randle and Donte Divincenzo for this match. Green collected 35 points in this competition, in a duel with Anthony Edwards, who marked a 37 -year -old summit. But Sengun, who leads the Rockets by scoring the 2.8 -point playoff series per game, was the largest thorn in Minnesota. He collected on average 25 points, 11.3 plates and 5.3 assists against the Timberwolves, including a triple-double and a double-double of 38 points.
The five starters of Houston are on average double figures in the eliminatory series against the Warriors:
Rockets starts in the playoffs
The size of the sample of five regular season games between the Wolves and the Warriors will not really be an indicator of nothing. Four of these matches took place before the calendar went to 2025, and all five occurred before the Warriors acquired Butler and did not make their push at the end of the season. The only thing these games show is that it will probably be Jaden McDaniels to obtain the mission on Curry when he defended the star of the Warriors for by far the most minutes of all the players on the wolves.
What the playoffs have shown on the Warriors is that coach Steve Kerr is not afraid to make adjustments and go deep in his bench at any time. He used three different starting alignments, turning to Kuminga, which has not been so presented since the team acquired Butler, during match 3 when Butler was sidelined due to an injury. Hield started games 4 and 5 alongside Curry, Butler, Green and Podziemski after Moody obtained the departure heads in games 1 and 2. It would be interesting to see if Kerr is based more on the post to face the wolves size with Gobert, Randle and Naz Reid.
Warriors start in playoffs
If the Warriors closed the Rockets in match 6 Friday evening, the Wolves welcome them for match 1 Monday evening at the Target Center in Minneapolis. If Houston forces a match 7 with a victory on Friday evening, Minnesota would visit the Rockets in Houston on Tuesday for match 1, welcome Golden State on Tuesday. Games 2, 3 and 4 would be every two days.
