The Minnesota Timberwolves walked out of Ball Arena on Saturday night with a 3-1 series lead over the Denver Nuggets after a 112-96 Game 4 win. They also walked out without their starting backcourt. Anthony Edwards, the franchise's All-NBA face, was diagnosed Sunday morning with a bone bruise and a hyperextended right knee that the team's medical staff is calling a multi-week absence. Donte DiVincenzo, the veteran combo guard who had stabilized the second unit all postseason, ruptured his right Achilles in the same second quarter and is undergoing surgery as of Sunday afternoon.
The Wolves won the game anyway. They won it because Ayo Dosunmu — a four-year backup picked up off the buyout market in February — went 13-of-17 from the field, 5-of-5 from three, and 12-of-12 from the line for 43 points. It is the second-highest playoff scoring game by a non-starter in the past decade, trailing only Jordan Poole's 50 in the 2022 Western Conference Finals. Dosunmu's eruption gave Minnesota a Game 4 it had no business winning when its top two perimeter players hit the locker room.
The series math is now tilted but unstable. A 3-1 lead is, in Western Conference history, a 95% probability of advancing. A 3-1 lead without your top scorer and your sixth man is something closer to 70%. Edwards' bone bruise typically requires 2-3 weeks of rest before return-to-play activity; he will not appear in the conference semifinals if Minnesota closes Denver out in five or six. DiVincenzo's Achilles will keep him out for the next 8-12 months. The Wolves' depth — Naz Reid, Rob Dillingham, Dosunmu — will be tested against either the Spurs or the Lakers in Round 2 in a way it has never been tested before.
The other plot line of the night was a third-quarter altercation between Nikola Jokić and Julius Randle that resulted in fines for both players Sunday morning. The NBA fined Jokić $25,000 for "directing inappropriate language at an opposing player" and Randle $35,000 for "instigating an on-court altercation." Neither was suspended. Game 5, with Edwards out and the Nuggets facing elimination, tips off Tuesday in Minnesota.
The broader question Sunday morning is what this week does to the Wolves' championship odds. They opened the playoffs at +650 to win the Larry O'Brien Trophy. As of Sunday's open, with the Edwards diagnosis priced in, those odds drifted to +1400. The market is essentially saying that a healthy Wolves team that plays through to the Finals is a contender; a Wolves team without Edwards for two rounds is not. The series is still theirs to lose. The trophy, for the moment, is not.