MIAMI – Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert had a sly smile on his face as he talked about why the team has had slow starts of late.
"Maybe we got to punch each other before the game or something like that," Gobert said. "Just to be ready to be physical."
Seemingly not lost on Gobert was that he was the one who took a swing at teammate Kyle Anderson during last season's regular-season finale, a moment that encapsulated a frustrating season that never really got off the ground for the Wolves.
But as Monday's 112-108 victory over the Heat showed, the distance between last season and this one is like the chasm between the December weather in South Beach and Minnesota.
The 20-5 Wolves took down the NBA's self-proclaimed toughest team on its home floor with a full Heat roster minus only point guard Kyle Lowry. The words "Heat culture" were everywhere in the Kaseya Center — on the floor and on Miami's jerseys. That phrase is synonymous with a type of toughness the Heat proclaim to have that others in the NBA don't, and they have two recent Eastern Conference titles to back that up.
But the Wolves went toe-to-toe and bucket-for-bucket down the stretch with the Heat and came out victorious. When Miami started hitting shots in the final minutes, the Wolves always had an answer.
"It was an incredible fourth quarter," coach Chris Finch said. "The shotmaking was at a high level by both teams."
Anthony Edwards, who finished with 32 points, had eight in the final minutes, and that included a fadeaway bank shot to put the Wolves up 109-106 with 26.1 seconds to play. That came after Tyler Herro (a team-high 25 points) cut the lead to one and the crowd was on its feet.
"I told Mike [Conley] when they made the shot to just give me the ball and move out of the way because I work on it every day," Edwards said. "I knew once I got to that spot, I was going glass."
Edwards' jumper came one Wolves possession after Karl-Anthony Towns (18 points) grabbed an offensive rebound of an Edwards miss over former Wolves forward Jimmy Butler (15 points) and then found Gobert (nine points, 16 rebounds) for an impressive alley-oop to keep the Wolves up three.
"I was ready to go rebound," Gobert said. "But I saw that he saw me, and I knew he was going to throw it. It was a perfect pass, great play."
Finch said moments like that, specifically the Towns-Gobert lob, were "winning plays." Those were in short supply early in the game when the Wolves fell behind in the half by 17 multiple times.
But as has been their pattern of late, the Wolves again put the clamps down defensively in the second half, which they won 58-42.
"Our second-half defense was everything," Finch said. "First half, I didn't really like us. We were soft. We looked confused at things that were simple, and we got on them a little at half, and they responded really well."
The word "physicality" came up a lot after the game in players' postgame comments on what changed with the defense.
"We told each other at halftime, let's be physical and see what happens," Gobert said. "We did, and the game took care of itself."
It helped that officials only called six fouls in the third quarter. The Wolves trailed 83-77 after three and finally took their first lead of the night when Conley (12 points, six assists) hit one of his four threes on the night to put the Wolves up 87-84 with 8:37 to play.
They took some punches Monday night, but they gave out a few more.
"Every time we do the things that we're supposed to do, especially defensively, we put ourselves in the position to win the game," Gobert said.
