With the Minnesota Timberwolves and Miami Heat tipping off their regular season against one another in just eleven days, Chris Finch and Erik Spoelstra decided that revealing their cards by playing their main rotation players was too big of a risk. So instead of Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball vs Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo, we got Joan Beringer and Bones Hyland vs Pelle Larsson and Simone Fontecchio. And you know what? It turned out to be a pretty fun game!<\/p>\n
For the Wolves, this meant a night off for their starting group and Ayo Dosunmo. With the rest bench crew getting some extra run tonight, it was a great chance for players fighting for minutes to make an extra impression on the coaches. Who was able to do it? Well, read on!<\/p>\n
Two Stats That Defined The Game:<\/p>\n
Big Ticket Award: Joan Beringer<\/p>\n
The Big Ticket Award is named after the franchise GOAT and is given the best player on the floor for the night. Tonight Beringer flashed all of those skills that make him such a tantalizing prospect. Dunks, monster blocks, running and finishing in transition, and even some work driving from the top of the key and drawing contact. He finished the night with a stuffed stat line:
10 points on 5\/6 shooting
7 rebounds (2 offensive)
1 assist
5 stocks (4 blocks)<\/p>\n
Even though it was backups for both teams, there was still requisite NBA talent on the floor and Beringer, quite literally, leapt off the screen with his play on both ends. While the Miami broadcast crew may have struggled mightily with his name (yes, more on that later), they couldn\u2019t help but gush as he began to stack impact play after impact play. If Beringer can continue to bottle those moments while limiting the cheap fouls, there will be a whole lot more gushing from opposing broadcast teams as they begin to get to know the young Frenchman.<\/p>\n
The \u201cQuick! To the Well!\u201d Award: Bones Hyland<\/p>\n
Cause he\u2019s a bucket. Get it?
Bones could have easily taken home the Big Ticket award tonight as he was absolutely lights out tonight shooting, finishing the night with 23 points on 6-9, including a scorching 5-6 from deep. Performances like this are going to put a lot of pressure on the coaching staff to find regular rotation minutes for him as it\u2019s an interesting push and pull with TJ Shannon presumably taking more of the backup point-of-attack duties.<\/p>\n
What was clear tonight is that Bones is a player that knows his game and has full confidence. And while I don\u2019t want to read too much into a game against backups and fringe NBA guys, his defense was noticeably solid tonight. He moved his feet and stayed in front of his man, never overreacting to quick moves or hesitation dribbles like so many do with less experience.<\/p>\n
The \u201cI Miss You So Much It Hurts Sometimes\u201d Award: Timberwolves Broadcast Crew<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right – an award give to people who were across the country! Look, it\u2019s a preseason game on an opposing team\u2019s broadcast – there are going to be mistakes. But between the \u201cBerh-Ann-Gee\u201ds and \u201cJaden Clark\u201ds, this was just another broadcast crew that is a reminder about how good we as Wolves fans have it. One of the best parts of the transition to the regular season will be to get to hear Jim Pete and (insert partner of the night) voices again.<\/p>\n
The Wolves hop on a plane and fly north to the concrete jungle to visit Karl-Anthony Towns and the New York Knicks on Monday, 10\/12 at 6:30pm CT. The game will be on NBA TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the Minnesota Timberwolves and Miami Heat tipping off their regular season against one another in just eleven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99,323306],"class_list":["post-878400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-timberwolves-scores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}