Timberwolves Chase Game 2 With a Fury

Even in the midst of all their first-round exits, no one ever accused the Minnesota Timberwolves of not bringing everything they had.

Sometimes they didn’t have much, as was the case when these Western Conference finals opened 48 hours after their draining seven-game victory over the Sacramento Kings. Sometimes they don’t have a full complement of players, as was the case when their roster grew even thinner Sunday night.

They manage to stay on the good side of their canine pedigree, more wolves than dogs.

Not once has Coach Flip Saunders walked into his locker room or stepped on a podium after a playoff game and questioned his team’s effort.

“We’ve always been a team that relies on our energy, how hard we play,” Saunders said.

Too bad for anyone whose interests are as simple as watching a competitive game that the same thing can’t be said for the Lakers.

Apparently, Kobe Bryant was the only one aware that Game 2 of the conference finals began at 7:37 p.m. Central time Sunday night, because no other Lakers bothered to show up. He scored 25 of the team’s first 46 points, and at one time scored or assisted on 15 of 20 field goals.

But one player is no match for an inspired team, just as accolades won’t stand up against aggression. If the Lakers weren’t impressed enough with their lengthy list of All-Star appearances and championship rings, they obviously felt comfortable about securing home-court advantage in this series with their victory in Game 1.

Game 2 was all about desperation and effort, which meant it was all about the Timberwolves, the victors by an 89-71 score. The Lakers had nothing but attitudes: an air of superiority at the start and lot of frustration in the fourth quarter.

As a result, except for Shaquille O’Neal’s brief detour to quote a Milli Vanilli song, the Lakers could do nothing but talk about how much harder the Timberwolves played.

“We have to match the intensity of the ballgame,” Karl Malone said. “Tonight we didn’t do that.

“Give those guys credit over there,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the Minnesota locker room down the hall. “They did what they needed to do. Their backs were against the wall. They won the game.”

They won it with the backup to the backup point guard handling the ball for 36 minutes. They won it with Mark Madsen coming within a basket of matching the scoring output of the Laker starting forwards. Sure, they won with MVP-ish numbers from Kevin Garnett (24 points and 11 rebounds), but most of all they won.

“I told the guys coming into the game that we had to find a way to play hard,” Saunders said.

Apparently, they didn’t have to search very long.

Garnett was active defensively on the Lakers’ first possession, and he used his long arms to disrupt plays all game. The Timberwolves extended the defense, picked up Laker ballhandlers early and forced O’Neal to come up and away from his favorite low-post spots to get the rock. When he did hold the ball, they sent more defenders his way. Whenever he passed out, there wasn’t enough time left on the shot clock to go back inside to him.

“We stepped it up and tried to pick them up a little earlier in their sets,” said Darrick Martin, who’s on the playoff roster only because Troy Hudson is injured and played Sunday only because starting point guard Sam Cassell’s back tightened up in the first minute of the game. “We just tried to push the ball and have an aggressive nature tonight.”

“We wanted to come out with energy,” Garnett said. “Going into Game 1, we were just so flat. In Game 2, we didn’t want to be caught on our heels.”

The Lakers played as if they were wearing six-inch stilettos.

They stood around and watched as the Timberwolves made 65% of their shots in the first quarter. You knew Minnesota couldn’t keep that pace throughout the game, but when the Timberwolves missed 16 of 23 shots in the second quarter, they out-hustled the Lakers to grab six offensive rebounds.

O’Neal must have forgotten all of the free-throw shooting literature he read that accounted for his nine-for-11 performance at the line in Game 1. He reverted to his old ways, even tossing up an airball that barely flicked the bottom of the net in the third quarter, and missed eight of 14.

“Just blame it on the rain today,” O’Neal said.

Yes it rained again in Minneapolis, just as it had all weekend. The nation’s basketball media never visited the Twin Cities in late May before, since the Timberwolves never made it past the first round of the playoffs. The sun never made an appearance.

But there’s good news for the local chamber of commerce. They’ll get another chance to showcase springtime in ‘Sota next weekend when, thanks to the Timberwolves’ urgency and the Lakers’ indifference, everyone comes back for Game 5.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.