Starting lineup changes, and Timberwolves beat Clippers by two

A decision intended to improve the Timberwolves’ slow starts yielded a streak-busting finish on Monday night, a 108-106 comeback victory over the Los Angeles Clippers at Target Center.

Two days before, Wolves coach Chris Finch publicly defended sticking with his same starting five, even though his team lost six of its last nine games.

Trailing by 19 points before Monday’s halftime, the Wolves led by nine with fewer than eight minutes left, then hung on in the final three frantic seconds when a Clippers team with James Harden, Norman Powell and newly returned Kawhi Leonard came up a bucket short.

With the Wolves struggling to start games, Finch took 18-year NBA veteran point guard Mike Conley out of the first five and started reserve guard Donte DiVincenzo alongside Anthony Edwards, Julius Randle, Jaden McDaniels and Rudy Gobert.

As recently as Saturday in Detroit, he defended being second-guessed on keeping his lineup as is, saying “I don’t think I’m being particularly stubborn.”

By Monday, Finch changed his mind.

“You know I just read all the papers,” Finch said, tongue firmly in cheek. “Everybody was telling me. I was like, `You know what? I should change the starting lineup.”

He finally decided to do so because thought DiVincenzo might add more pace to the starting unit, Conley might return to himself with a fast-playing second unit and it’d also unite DiVincenzo and Randle, who played together last season in New York.

It took some time. They fell behind by 19 points before halftime, but they got better, turning the game around with a 31-23 third quarter.

The victory ended a three-game losing streak to the Pistons, Boston and Oklahoma City. They’re now a game over .500, at 18-17. This time last season, the Wolves were 25-10, had just lost back-to-back games for the first time all season and wouldn’t lose three games consecutively until the playoffs.

Finch said he talked to Conley about the new starting five at Monday’s morning shootaround.

“I kind of asked his permission to do it, just due to his pedigree and amazing career,” Finch said. “He was all for it, to do whatever we need to do. He was kind of welcoming of it.”

He swapped out Conley for DiVicenzo to start the game and later played with lineups that included Conley with Gobert, Edwards, McDaniels and Naz Reid.

Conley has started 1096 of the 1131 career games he has played with Memphis, Utah and the Wolves since his NBA debut in 2007.

He last didn’t start a game since he started 42 of 43 with the Jazz in 2022-2023, then was traded to the Wolves during the season.

When asked about the new role, Conley said with a smile, “I gave them hell, man.”

Then he said, “I told them I complete understand. I’ll do whatever it takes for me and my team to find rhythm. It was a real quick conversation. It was respectful, man. It was super cool he even that. I know he knows I’m going to be OK with that. But to sit down and ask says a lot about the respect he has for me and all our players.”

Conley found some rhythm with the second unit, with an 11-point, four-rebound, three-assist game.

BOXSCORE: Timberwolves 108, L.A. Clippers 106

NBA standings

Edwards found the force with which he prefer to play, too. After scoring a career high 53 points Saturday in Detroit, he came back with 37 points that included six made threes. He also had eight assists, passing out of double-teams at every turn.

“We want him to be that,” DiVincenzo said. “We want him to be a scorer. We want him to have fun. We want him to bring joy to the game and to everybody else around him. We’ll figure it out.”

Edwards didn’t talk to reporters games Monday and Saturday after he had been fined twice before after speaking his mind, sometimes profanely, to them.

“I’ll start talking to the media again when they start giving me more foul calls,” he said as he left the Wolves’ locker room heading for a flight to New Orleans for Tuesday’s game there.

Gobert had single-digit rebounds in four of his five games before Monday’s 8-point, 18-rebound game.

“It was great to see him rebounding at such a high level again,” Finch said.

Gobert basically called it Rudy being Rudy.

“That’s who I am,” Gobert said. “Seems a simple way I can set the tone for my team on both ends and impact winning.”