Timberwolves coach paints dreary picture Spurs fans should salivate over

Will the real winners of the Denver/Minnesota series please stand up? I'm not talking about either of those teams, either. The Spurs are the true beneficiaries of the six-game standoff that just wrapped up last night, and the Timberwolves' head coach, Chris Finch, can tell you why.

"I figured the real winner of this series was gonna be San Antonio because both these teams were going to take a lot of pieces out of each other," Finch told reporters after finishing off Nikola Jokic's Nuggets. That's one of several points that Spurs critics were missing when they labeled the franchise "dumb" for not doing everything in their power to win their final game of the season.

The Timberwolves and Nuggets have a fierce rivalry. That was their third playoff meeting in four years. Those two were always going to cannibalize each other. That's a major benefit for the Spurs to add onto the biggest advantage that keeps being forgotten in these debates: San Antonio is just a better team anyway.

The Spurs never had a reason to worry about this bracket

There's a difference between in-season evolution and getting on a hot streak. The Silver and Black were proving themselves to be a serious threat throughout the season, but when February hit, they took off and never looked back. Everything they'd learned to that point seemed to click at once, and the Spurs separated themselves from the pack as a result.

The only team in the Western Conference that was keeping pace for the same length of time was OKC. We're talking about two and a half months of dominance, only losing one game with Victor Wembanyama in the lineup. The common talking point we heard from analysts everywhere was that the only thing holding them back from crowning the Spurs was their lack of experience.

That's in-season evolution. What the Nuggets did at the end of the year was a hot streak. They didn't start stringing consistent wins together until more than halfway through March. Their flaws were clear, though. Their flaws were always going to catch up to them. You don't all of a sudden morph into a team you haven't been all season just because the playoffs arrive. It doesn't work like that.

The Spurs are one of the big dogs of the postseason

There was never a reason for San Antonio to fear Denver just because they lost some regular-season games to them that Wembanyama barely played in. The Timberwolves don't even get that. The two close contests the Silver and Black had against Minnesota, with Wemby in the lineup, were both played during this team's worst month of the season: January.

They haven't seen the new and improved version that rose in February. Now Anthony Edwards is compromised, and Donte DiVincenzo (Achilles) is out for the playoffs. The Timberwolves never got on a roll this year, either. They're the sixth seed because they've been inconsistent from the jump. That's not an issue for the Spurs. They'll find a way to impose their will in one way or another.

San Antonio was 13 games better than them in the regular season, and there's zero fear in the Alamo City boys. They'll meet the Timberwolves head-on. They're more rested, more talented, and just as hungry. Minnesota had two cracks at advancing past the Western Conference Finals in the previous two years. They failed. It's San Antonio's turn now.

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