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2025 NBA Western Conference Finals Preview: How Can the Timberwolves Stop the Thunder?

Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar20/05/2025 - 09:39 am
Anthony Edwards #5 of the Minnesota Timberwolves
(Photo by Ellen Schmidt/Getty Images)

The 2025 NBA playoffs have reached the Western Conference Finals with the Oklahoma City Thunder heavily favored against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who are in this round for the second year in a row. Both teams were eliminated by the Dallas Mavericks last season, and now they look to reach the NBA Finals and win their first championship.

Behind likely MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the top-ranked defense, the Thunder have been the best NBA team all season. But they no doubt had a scare against the Denver Nuggets in the semifinals, needing a few fourth-quarter comebacks before getting a blowout win in Game 7 to advance.

The Timberwolves have a pair of 4-1 series wins against the Lakers and Warriors, catching a break that Steph Curry’s hamstring was injured in the semifinals. But the Timberwolves were always better than the No. 6 seed they entered this postseason with as they are No. 4 in Net Rating on the season.

The Thunder enter this series with -375 odds at FanDuel to win the series, which implies a chance of just under 79%. The Timberwolves are +300 to win it.

With Game 1 this Tuesday night, let’s preview the series and what it’ll take for the Timberwolves to pull off the upset. We also have some prop picks for Game 1.

What Is the Secret Sauce for the Thunder’s Historic Season?

If that great semifinal series between the Nuggets and Thunder was your main introduction to Oklahoma City this season, you may not believe this team has had an all-time great season in NBA history. Outside of Games 2 and 7 where the Thunder dominated, every game was really close and could have just as easily been won by Denver, a team that fired its coach a week before the playoffs and ranked No. 22 on defense.

But the Thunder are having a historic season:

  • According to the Simple Rating System (SRS) at Basketball Reference that adjusts point differential with strength of schedule, the 2024-25 Thunder have the highest SRS in history at 12.70, surpassing the 1970-71 Bucks (11.92).
  • The Thunder’s average margin of victory this season (+12.87) is the largest in any season in NBA history.
  • Oklahoma City won 54 games this regular season by 10-plus points, the most in NBA history (the 1971-72 Lakers had 50).
  • Even through 11 games this postseason, the Thunder (+12.91) have the fourth-highest margin of victory in NBA playoff history and the third highest for a team that played at least 4 games.

A primary reason why the Thunder rank so highly in a metric like SRS is because this team won in dominant fashion (big margins) in a Western Conference that saw seven other teams win at least 48 games, so they dominated a deep conference this season.

But it’s remarkable to see these Thunder up there with some of the best teams in NBA history like the Lakers and Bucks of the early 1970s, the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, and the 2016-17 Warriors after they acquired Kevin Durant. It’s all the more remarkable when you consider Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the only Hall of Fame-caliber player the team has.

The Thunder are one of the youngest teams in the NBA, so maybe Chet Holmgren puts together a nice career, and maybe Jalen Williams makes several All-Star teams after making his first this year. But for right now, SGA is the only player you see on a Hall of Fame path.

But as the Thunder showed in Game 7 against Denver on Sunday, their defense sets the tone and makes scoring easier for them on the other end. They forced Denver into 23 turnovers thanks to relentless pressure, which is made possible by the fact that this team is so young, athletic, and rangy. Between Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein, the Thunder get plenty of rebounding, rim protection, and shot blocking from their bigs. Then they can bring a nuisance for the opponent off the bench like Alex Caruso, the poster boy for scrappiness.

While it sounds so cliché, it’s true by the data that the Thunder are just better at hustle plays and keeping up defensive pressure this year. They are arguably as good as any team in NBA history at managing turnovers too:

  • The Thunder are +4.5% in net turnover percentage, which ranks No. 2 in NBA history behind only the 2022-23 Raptors (+5.0%).
  • The Thunder had 17 games this regular season where they had at least 10 fewer turnovers than their opponent, tying the single-season record by the 1993-94 SuperSonics.
  • The Thunder won 55 games this season after winning the turnover battle, the most in NBA history (1995-96 Bulls had 53).
  • In the 2024-25 regular season, the Thunder led the league in deflections (21.2) and loose balls recovered (5.8), including a league-high 3.3 loose balls recovered on defense (0.5 more than any other team).
  • The Thunder recovered a league-high 56.8% of loose balls on defense this season.
  • In the 2025 playoffs, the Thunder lead in deflections (21.9) and loose balls recovered (5.5).
  • In the 2024-25 regular season, the Thunder led in charges drawn (0.77/game) and contested 3-point shots (18.9).
  • This season, the Thunder have the highest percentage of points scored off turnovers in the regular season (18.1%) and the postseason (21.1%).
  • The Thunder are the only team this year to average more than 20 points per game off turnovers.

Oklahoma City protects the ball as well as any team with the lowest turnover rate in the league. They take the ball away as well as any team with the most steals per game this year. When you do these things, winning games is a lot easier.

It’s also not really a fluke since the 2023-24 Thunder also led the NBA with 20.5 points off turnovers and were No. 2 in 2022-23 with 20.6 points. Pressure on the ball is the name of the game for coach Mark Daigneault. You don’t need the most elite shooters and scorers to win big if you’re doing so well with turnovers.

You’ll find better 3-point shooting teams than the Thunder this year. There are better rebounding teams. But turnovers are the secret sauce for this historic season for the Thunder. Protect the ball when you have it and pressure the ball when they have it.

That’s what’s worked so well for them.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander #2 of the Oklahoma City Thunder looks on against the Minnesota Timberwolves
(Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)

How Does Minnesota Stop the Thunder?

Including the playoffs, the Thunder are 76-17 this season. To Minnesota’s credit, the Timberwolves are a respectable 2-2 against OKC, though it should be noted that three of those matchups came 11 days apart in February, including back-to-back games the last time they met.

In Minnesota’s two wins, the Thunder shot .420 and .425 from the field, two of their worst shooting games of the season. Like any team, the Thunder aren’t as successful on bad shooting days. They are 16-11 when shooting under 45% from the field this year. Minnesota allows the seventh-lowest FG% this season on defense, so the Timberwolves have to bring it defensively.

SGA has gone off in 3-of-4 games against the Timberwolves with 37, 39, and 40 points. But maybe the strategy is similar to how Dallas beat the Thunder last year in the playoffs. Your star (Anthony Edwards) about matches what SGA does, but you have that other player step up like Julius Randle or even Rudy Gobert, who had 27 points and 24 rebounds in the Game 5 close-out of the Lakers in the first round.

Let SGA get his 30-point game while the other players struggle. Jalen Williams didn’t have a very good series at all against Denver before finally sparking in Game 7 with 24 points. The question for the Thunder has been if they have enough help around SGA should they run into a team in the playoffs with multiple elite scorers. They couldn’t get past Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving in Dallas last year. They just got by the duo of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray in Denver.

While the Thunder are good at the 3-point shot (10th in attempts, 7th in 3P%), you wouldn’t say it’s a huge part of their success like you would the Celtics of recent years. They can win without it. But they are great at defending it, so that’s maybe where the Timberwolves can make up some ground if their 3-point shooting comes alive after they were No. 4 in 3P% (.377) this season. Edwards takes a ton but he needs good days from Naz Reid and Donte DiVincenzo to help him out.

However, I thought it was interesting that the Timberwolves have already defeated OKC in games where they shot 12-of-46 (.261) and 9-of-32 (.281) from 3-point territory this season. The only other game all year the Thunder lost when allowing under 34% from deep was Game 1 against Denver when they blew the “foul up 3” strategy. Maybe it means nothing, but I think it bodes well for the Timberwolves that they’ve won games against OKC without great shooting.

At least not great shooting from deep. From the free throw line, the Timberwolves shot .909 and .872 in their wins over the Thunder, two of the three best games against that team in a win this year.

It’s a hard number to hit against a swarming OKC defense, but 116 points is a good target range for the Timberwolves, who are 6-0 this postseason when they score at least that many points. On the season, the Thunder are 8-14 when they allow more than 115 points.

But if you’re the Timberwolves, you have to find a way to get the game into clutch time, something they’re very familiar with. These are games within 5 points in the final 5:00.

  • On the season, the Timberwolves played in a league-high 46 clutch games with a 20-26 record (4-0 in the playoffs).
  • The Thunder played a league-low 24 clutch games as they usually were up big, and they were 16-8 in such games (4-2 in playoffs).

Maybe the X-factor in this series is Julius Randle. He was criticized as a terrible playoff performer with the Knicks, but in 10 games with the Timberwolves this postseason, he is averaging 23.9 points, 5.9 rebounds, 5.9 assists, and shooting .509 from the field (.344 FG% in the playoffs in New York). He’s playing championship-winning basketball at age 30 and could be the Robin to Edwards’ trash-talking Batman.

Thunder vs. Timberwolves Game 1 Betting Picks

The Thunder should ultimately win this series and advance to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012. But it has the potential to be long and entertaining if the Timberwolves protect the ball enough. They can be a maddeningly frustrating team with their inconsistency, and that’s why it’s too hard to trust them to upset the Thunder in a best-of-7 series.

But in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, the Thunder are at home and a 7.5-point favorite with a total of 215.5 points. That’s another thing about the Thunder this season. They are 57-33-4 ATS (63.3%), the best spread record in the NBA over the last three years.

But the Timberwolves are 11-6 ATS (64.7%) as a road underdog this season, the fourth-best record. Minnesota is also 7-3 ATS this postseason while OKC is just 4-7 ATS (36.4%). I think the Timberwolves keep it close enough to take them with the points in Game 1.

Here are some prop picks I also like for Game 1 (odds via FanDuel):

Julius Randle 20+ Points (-122): Randle missed all three meetings with OKC in February. I think he looks to continue his great playoff run with a big game and will get over 20 points to take some pressure off Edwards.

Alex Caruso 2+ Steals (+125): We talked about Caruso being a nuisance with pickpocketing players. He’s had 2+ steals in 6-of-11 playoff games and 28-of-54 regular-season games this year, including 2-for-2 against Minnesota. The Timberwolves turned it over 24 times in this building on New Year’s Eve, so I think Caruso can get a couple more steals after 5 in his last two games against Denver.

Anthony Edwards Under 30.5 Pts + Ast (-110): Edwards only scored 37 points total in his two games at OKC this year, and he was held to 2 assists the first time. I think he comes out a bit passive in this Game 1 before settling into the series later, finishing just under 30.5 on points and assists combined.

Naz Reid Over 1.5 3-Pointers Made (-130): The Timberwolves will badly need that secondary scoring from deep and Naz Reid is a good option. He’s started the two playoff series this year by going 6-of-9 and 3-of-7 from deep. Look for him to get his shots in this one and make a couple.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Over 31.5 Points (-114): We mentioned the huge numbers SGA’s had this year against Minnesota’s defense. He looked great in Game 7 and he should come out strong two nights later at home to start this series too. I’m taking his over.

We’ll cover the Eastern Conference Finals between the Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks tomorrow before Game 1 starts Wednesday night.

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Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar20/05/2025 - 09:39 am