Rallying Against L.A. Is Different

The Timberwolves were down this road 2 1/2 weeks ago. They received a sub-par game from Kevin Garnett and lost the opener of the Sacramento series at Target Center.

The ‘Wolves came back from that to reach a seventh game, and then Garnett carried them into the Western Conference finals with a gigantic performance.

One problem with attempting to follow that pattern again:

Garnett and the ‘Wolves are now playing the Los Angeles Lakers, a team with a championship pedigree, and not the Kings, a team looking over its collective shoulder and waiting for postseason calamity to arrive.

The fear among ‘Wolves backers Friday night was that the key players would be running on empty when it came to energy and emotion, considering it was only 48 hours earlier that they were going down to the final fraction of a second to eliminate the Kings.

The fear certainly seemed to become fact in Garnett’s case. He appeared to be moving with half of the usual life in his legs almost from the get-go.

The matchup the ‘Wolves must win decisively is Garnett against Karl Malone, the proud but aged veteran. On this night, Malone did better than a push.

He proved fully capable of keeping himself in front of Garnett and stopping the most valuable player’s few attempts to get to the basket. As soon as Malone made Garnett hold the ball, the Lakers would send Kobe Bryant or another perimeter defender at him.

“I think they are doing what Sacramento did,” the ‘Wolves’ Latrell Sprewell said. “They are running guys at Kevin. They are coming from everywhere. I think they took a page out of Sacramento’s playbook.”

For sure, the Lakers brought the same strategy when it came to Trenton Hassell, the ‘Wolves’ defensive specialist. They sent his defender right to Garnett and left Hassell open for jump shots. Hassell made three of four, but Coach Flip Saunders was forced to go heavily to Wally Szczerbiak to try to keep the Lakers somewhat honest on defense.

Hassell wound up playing 20 minutes to 24 for Szczerbiak. This meant that Sprewell was carrying the offense and taking Hassell’s assignment of guarding Kobe Bryant in the second half.

It was another magnificent, ironman effort for Sprewell -- 23 points, five assists, six rebounds in 46 minutes.

Basically, he was the reason the ‘Wolves were on the periphery of being in the game down the stretch ... with some unexpected assistance from Michael Olowokandi.

The ‘Wolves can try to buck up for tonight’s second game with this rationale: They were in it for 46 minutes, and they can be certain to get a much bigger effort from Garnett.

The reverse could be that they are getting closer to being required to function without point guard Sam Cassell, who did not play the final 13 1/2 minutes because of continuing pain in his hip and back.

Plus, can they really expect Olowokandi to provide as much (33 minutes, 10 points, 11 rebounds, a reasonable four fouls) in tonight’s rematch with Shaquille O’Neal?