Timberwolves vs. Warriors: Is this Stephen Curry and Co.'s last stand? Key matchups, schedule and prediction

The Western Conference’s No. 6 seed, the Minnesota Timberwolves (49-33), will take on the No. 7 Golden State Warriors (48-34) in the first round of the 2025 NBA playoffs. It’s the first time these two franchises have met in the postseason.

It’s also just the third time that the sixth and seventh seeds have faced off after toppling their favored opponents in the first round. The last time it happened: 2023, when the seventh-seeded Lakers knocked off the sixth-seeded Warriors in six games. So Golden State will be hoping for both a different outcome and that history repeats itself. In conclusion, the playoffs are a land of contrasts.

What we know about the Timberwolves

It took a while for the Wolves to find their footing after the eve-of-training-camp blockbuster that sent Karl-Anthony Towns to New York for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo. But after a couple of up-and-down, getting-to-know-you months — and after a midseason blip that saw both new arrivals miss time due to injury — the Wolves turned into a Minnesota wrecking crew, posting a top-five record and net rating after the All-Star break to edge past the Warriors and Grizzlies in the standings, and into the safety of the sixth seed.

To plenty of observers and prognosticators, a first-round matchup with Luka Dončić, LeBron James and the Lakers didn’t exactly seem like “safety.” To Anthony Edwards and Co., though, the Lakers didn’t look like favorites. They looked like food.

Edwards was brilliant, turning in his most composed playmaking performance to date — 31 assists against just six turnovers in five games, consistently making sharp reads and sharper decisions to get off the ball against a loaded-up Lakers defense and trust that his teammates could capitalize on playing with the advantage. The rest of the Wolves delivered, with Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid combining for 48 points in a Game 1 rout, McDaniels popping for 30 in Game 3, Randle providing 25 to support Edwards’ superstar turn in Game 4 … and the forever maligned Rudy Gobert turning in the game of his life, with 27 points and 24 rebounds in Game 5, to end the Lakers season.

Edwards, never at a loss for confidence, enters Round 2 having proven he can be the best player in a series featuring LeBron and Luka. Randle enters having sloughed off years of playoff underperformance in New York, averaging 22.6 points per game on 48/39/84 shooting splits against the Lakers while playing strong defense on James.

McDaniels proved he’s a bona fide playoff X-factor. DiVincenzo, Reid, combo guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker and veteran point man Mike Conley give Minnesota one of the most versatile and potent rotations in the postseason. And Gobert … well, I’m going to guess he doesn’t need any added motivation when it comes to matching up with Draymond Green.

What we know about the Warriors

They made the Jimmy Butler trade to give them a chance to play “meaningful basketball” in April and beyond. Well, mission accomplished.

The Warriors owned the NBA’s fourth-best record and third-best net rating after the trade deadline — ahead of Minnesota on both fronts. They’re now 27-10 since Butler’s debut. In games where Jimmy, Draymond and Stephen Curry all play, they’re 26-8 — a 63-win pace.

Butler’s arrival has transformed Golden State on both ends of the court. He has provided another avenue of attack, with his low-turnover isolation play and free-throw-generating work on the interior serving as a viable off-speed pitch to the Warriors’ time-honored, free-wheeling Curry-centered motion offense. He has diversified and strengthened their defense, pairing with Green to give Golden State two high-IQ multipositional possession-wreckers; among postseason participants, only Oklahoma City and Boston have allowed fewer points per possession than the Warriors since Butler came to the Bay. And he has unleashed Curry, who has played MVP-level ball since the Jimmy trade, and who enters Round 2 having once again — with a mammoth assist from Buddy Hield’s out-of-body experience in Game 7 — plunged a dagger into the hearts of an opposing fanbase on the road in a do-or-die playoff game. (Houston, man. Always Houston.)

The Warriors will be on the road again, with just one off day between finishing off the Rockets and tipping things off at Target Center. They will, again, be playing a younger, bigger, more physical and deeper opponent with home-court advantage. They will be doing so with the 37-year-old Curry, 35-year-old Butler and 35-year-old Green all coming off logging 40-plus minutes in Game 7, with Curry dealing with a thumb injury and Butler still feeling the effects of his pelvic contusion.

For the first time in ages, the odds aren’t in Golden State’s favor; a slew of postseason projection models peg Minnesota as the likelier pick to get back to the Western Conference finals. Curry and Co. still have a chance, though — another couple of weeks, at least, of meaningful basketball. That’s all they wanted; now, they have to make the most of it.

Head-to-head

Golden State won the season series, 3-1.

Minnesota’s lone win came in the first meeting: a 107-90 victory that saw the Wolves rip off two monster runs — 23-2 in the second quarter, 21-4 in the fourth — to outpace a Warriors team struggling enough to score that head coach Steve Kerr decided to experiment with inserting Jonathan Kuminga in the starting lineup and bringing Green off the bench. (I’m going to go out on a limb and say that won’t happen in this series.)

The long-armed and tenacious McDaniels helped limit Curry to 6-for-17 shooting, while Edwards shined with a game-high 30 points and nine assists — one of just three nine-dime outings for him during the regular season.

Steph responded in kind two nights later, teaming with Hield to pour in 57 points on a combined 12 3-pointers in a 114-106 Warriors win. The last of their triples came with just under a minute to go, after a Gary Payton II steal gave Curry the chance to set Buddy up in the corner for the dagger:

Curry again led the dance in the next matchup, finishing with 31 points with 10 assists and outscoring Minnesota by himself in the final five minutes, 13-11, to seal a 113-103 win …

… and again in the fourth and final regular-season affair, drilling a side-step bomb in the corner with 47 seconds left to ice a 116-115 win, ensuring that Golden State didn’t squander an early 24-point lead and posting his third 30-point performance of the season against the Wolves.

It’s reasonable to wonder how much we can take from those matchups. Golden State had different starting lineups in each of them, and they all came before the trade deadline, which means none of them featured Butler. They also all came before the Wolves found their best selves. That final loss to Golden State dropped Minnesota to 21-19 with a plus-1.8 net rating. The Wolves went 28-14 the rest of the way, outscoring opponents by 7.9 points-per-100 — the fourth-highest mark in the league, behind only Oklahoma City, Boston and Cleveland.

There were two constants, though. Every member of the eight-man rotation with which Minnesota bullied the Lakers played in all four of the contests — no major injuries or absences to report. And Curry was an absolute monster, averaging 28.8 points and 7.5 assists per game on .644 true shooting against the Wolves.

The Warriors outscored the Wolves by 9.3 points per 100 possessions with Steph on the floor during the regular season. Spoiler alert: He’s going to be on the floor a lot in Round 2. Minnesota’s chances of advancing depend heavily on limiting his opportunities to spontaneously combust.

Matchup to watch

Draymond vs. Rudy, and also, Draymond vs. Draymond

OK, well, for starters: We can’t have any of this.

Whatever the genesis of Green’s evident antipathy for Gobert, he has to, has to, has to keep it under control. The only way Golden State’s defense works is if he’s at the heart of it, barking out orders, impeding driving and passing lanes, protecting the rim and — critically — keeping the Wolves off of the offensive glass.

The Wolves scored just 92.4 points per 100 possessions in the half-court against the Warriors this season, according to Cleaning the Glass; that would’ve ranked 27th in the NBA during the regular season. Give them extra bites at the apple, though, and the math can change: They scored 131 points-per-100 against Golden State on putback attempts, a mammoth jolt in offensive efficiency … and the 7-foot-1 Gobert, one of the NBA’s premier offensive rebounders for more than a decade, is the driving force in creating those second-chance opportunities.

Across four regular-season meetings with Golden State, Minnesota had a 31% offensive rebounding rate in Gobert’s minutes — a near-top-five mark. The Wolves hauled in 36.4% of their misses with Gobert on the floor against the small-ball Lakers in Round 1 — a mark that would’ve led the league during the regular season.

Granted, L.A. didn’t have a small-ball 5 in the same galaxy as Green. But while Draymond played an integral role in limiting Houston’s second chances in Game 7, he also did struggle at times to punch up in weight class on the glass against the Rockets’ twin-towers tandem of Alperen Şengün and Steven Adams; the Warriors grabbed a lower share of available defensive rebounds than any team in Round 1 … except the one that couldn’t handle Gobert.

“You can not like who [Gobert] is, how he does it, what he looks like, etc.,” Finch told reporters after the center’s monster Game 5 performance. “When you have this guy on your team, you understand what a professional and a winner is. He’s just such a competitor, as well. He doesn’t listen to the outside noise, we don’t listen to the outside noise.”

There’ll be plenty of outside noise surrounding this series: about Olympic teammates Edwards and Curry vying for supremacy in yet another generational clash in these playoffs; about Butler returning to face a franchise he once tried to burn to the ground. As ever, though, the cacophony will center on Green: on his past misdeeds, and his precarious present. (Green racked up four technical fouls and two flagrant fouls against Houston; you get a one-game suspension for reaching seven technicals or accumulating four flagrant points in the playoffs.) On whether one of the greatest defenders ever — a player versatile enough to check opponents of all shapes and sizes — can check himself.

“He’s the key to our team,” Kerr recently told Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “He’s the guy who can drive winning. But he can also drive losing, frankly. What makes him great is also his kryptonite. His emotion, his passion, his competitive fire.”

If that fire can fuel the sort of performance that stifles Edwards, keeps Gobert off the glass and makes Minnesota’s complementary players see ghosts, the Warriors very well could continue playing meaningful basketball all the way to the Western Conference finals. But if it burns too hot, it threatens to consume what might be the last real championship chance for Golden State’s golden generation.

Draymond has shown us both sides of the competitive coin countless times over the years. Which side will come up now? Call it in the air.

“One thing about this league,” Green told reporters on Sunday. “You’re never done proving who you are until you’re done. Completely finished.”

Crunch-time lineups

Minnesota Timberwolves

Edwards and McDaniels, Minnesota’s top perimeter options on either end of the court, will be out there. Randle didn’t make shots late — just 7-for-20 from the field and 2-for-8 from 3-point land in fourth quarters against the Lakers — but his rebounding, physicality, passing and (somewhat surprising) defensive work have made him a constant in head coach Chris Finch’s late-game lineups.

Finch trusts Gobert. If the Wolves’ offense starts to bog down against that Warriors defense, though, he’s also willing to take the Frenchman off the floor in favor of Reid, who played more fourth-quarter and “clutch” minutes than Gobert in Round 1 — and who featured at the 5 alongside Edwards, McDaniels, Randle and DiVincenzo in a group that blitzed L.A. by 32 points in 14 fourth-quarter minutes.

Conley’s the surest pair of hands on the Wolves’ roster, but he also has the biggest defensive bullseye on his chest; it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Finch lean away from him. The younger, longer, more defensively versatile Alexander-Walker has had big moments in the past, but is shooting just 34.2% from the field and 27.9% from deep over the last two postseasons — a level of punchlessness that could render him a spectator in close-and-late situations.

Golden State Warriors

Barring injury or, um, Draymond-specific extracurriculars, Curry, Green and Butler are locks to be on the floor when it matters most. Brandin Podziemski’s complementary offensive work and defensive playmaking have made him a staple in Kerr’s late-game rotation; he played all but the final seven seconds of the fourth quarter of Game 7 against Houston, and trailed only Curry and Green for the team lead in fourth-quarter minutes in Round 1.

Swingman Moses Moody — the fifth member of what had been one of the NBA’s best lineups since Butler’s arrival — found himself moved to the bench and playing curtailed minutes as the Houston series wore on, with Kerr opting for Hield’s shooting over Moody’s defensive versatility against that elite Rockets defense. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see that carry over against the Wolves; nor would it be a shock to see Kerr call on championship veterans Kevon Looney and Gary Payton II (who missed Game 7 due to illness) to battle Gobert on the boards and Edwards at the point of attack, respectively.

Prediction: Wolves in 6

The idea of picking against Curry, particularly against a team he torched during the regular season, makes me feel queasy. But with Golden State coming off a seven-game war against Houston, with the Warriors’ mid-30s top guns all having put a ton of minutes and miles on their legs to knock off the Rockets, with the every-other-day cadence, and with Minnesota having both home-court advantage and a rest advantage … everything just seems to be lined up for the Wolves to eventually force the more experienced underdog to run out of gas, and to make their way back to the Western Conference finals.

Series betting odds

(Via BetMGM)

Minnesota Timberwolves (-185)

Golden State Warriors (+155)

Series schedule (all times Eastern)

Game 1: Tue., 5/6 @ Minnesota (9:30 p.m., TNT)

Game 2: Thu., 5/8 @ Minnesota (8:30 p.m., TNT)

Game 3: Sat., 5/10 @ Golden State (8:30 p.m., ABC)

Game 4: Mon., 5/12 @ Golden State (10 p.m., ESPN)

*Game 5: Wed., 5/14 @ Minnesota (TBD, TNT)

*Game 6: Sun., 5/18 @ Golden State (TBD)

*Game 7: Tue., 5/20 @ Minnesota (8:30 p.m., ESPN)

*if necessary

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Timberwolves vs. Warriors: Is this Stephen Curry and Co.’s last stand? Key matchups, schedule and prediction