The Minnesota Timberwolves met the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night with one team trying to hold together a shorthanded rotation and the other riding a run that has changed the tone of its season. New Orleans arrived with four straight wins after a 0-4 start, while Minnesota came in after a tough win over the Houston Rockets.
That is why this game drew attention. The Pelicans had climbed back to.500 by beating the Memphis Grizzlies and the Atlanta Hawks, and the turnaround made them more than a passing matchup even if they are still not viewed as a club built to climb the Western Conference standings. Zion Williamson has been the hardest problem to solve in this setting, with a 28.5-point average against Minnesota compared with a 23.8-point career mark, and Saddiq Bey has also been a strong scorer against the Wolves, averaging 19.5 points for his career against them and 24 points per game as a Pelican.
Minnesota’s own injury picture has forced the issue on the other side of the floor. Bones Hyland has had to absorb more responsibility, going from eight minutes per game in the four games before Anthony Edwards got hurt to 16 minutes per game across the five matchups since Edwards and Terrence Shannon Jr. went down. That extra run has already produced a spike in output, including 19 points and eight assists against the Los Angeles Clippers last week, and it shows how thin the Timberwolves are having to work around the loss of two regular pieces.
The Pelicans, though, are not arriving as a hollow hot streak. Derik Queen has looked like a solid NBA big man, and Jeremiah Fears has been becoming a more well-rounded player, which gives New Orleans enough live bodies and enough upward movement to stay dangerous while it is healthy for now. That is the friction in Friday night’s matchup: a Minnesota team still patching minutes together against a New Orleans group that was written off early, then responded with seven wins in four games and a stretch that included stronger opponents.
What happens next will be measured less by the standings than by whether Minnesota can keep surviving these stretches without Edwards and Shannon, and whether the Pelicans’ early surge holds once the league adjusts. If Hyland keeps carrying a larger workload, the Timberwolves may be able to stay afloat. If not, Friday night could be the kind of game that exposes just how narrow their margin has become.
