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Did this 50-loss team give others a blueprint to beat the Warriors?

Courtesy of Brad Rempel, USA Today Sports

One of the Golden State Warriors’ most-surprising losses of an otherwise historical regular season came against a Minnesota Timberwolves squad that would eventually end the year with 53 defeats.

It was the last of Golden State’s nine regular season losses. It came in overtime against Minnesota. It came at home, just the team’s second loss in front of its boisterous crowd in Oakland.

It came less than two months ago and might have foretold the Warriors’ massive struggles against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals.

The game saw Golden State jump out to a nine-point halftime lead before Minnesota outscored the home team by eight in the fourth and seven in overtime to come away with a surprising 124-17 win.

As Michael Rand of the Star Tribune notes, Minnesota’s late-game surge came with it matching the Warriors small-ball lineup.

“When the Wolves won 124-117 in overtime at Golden State, putting the Warriors’ run at the record in jeopardy by handing them just their ninth loss of the year, they did it down the stretch using a small lineup: Ricky Rubio, Zach LaVine, Karl-Anthony Towns, Shabazz Muhammad and Andrew Wiggins.”

That’s three guards, a small forward and a power forward/center taking on what had been considered a “death lineup” from the Warriors.

The end results were clear as day.

Minnesota ran up and down the court with Golden State as the game progressed, eventually outscoring the defending champs 28-27 in transition. A total of 21 of those 28 points came during the team’s run in the second half.

This is eerily similar to what we’ve seen from Oklahoma City as it looks to close out the Warriors Thursday night in Oakland. The Thunder are averaging 30 fast-break points in their three wins in this series compared to putting up just 13 in their sole loss.

It’s rather obvious that there’s one correlation here. Golden State turned the ball over 24 times in its loss to Minnesota back in March. In Tuesday’s Game 4 blowout loss, the Warriors had 21 turnovers.

Some of this is careless, as we indicated in a column earlier today. But some of this is also by design.

While the T’Wolves went small in that game, they did place a 6-foot-5 Zach LaVine on Stephen Curry throughout the second half after Ricky Rubio struggled staying with the MVP initially. It led to four turnovers (all in the second half) from Curry.

All said, Curry shot 7-of-25 from the field, including 4-of-14 from three-point range in that game.

This enabled Rubio to stay off the ball and pretty much covered for his issues on defense.

Also important in that game was the strong on-ball pressure Minnesota put on Draymond Green when he was running the point. All said, Green turned the ball over six times in the loss.

Fast forward to the last two games of the Western Conference Finals, and Green was utterly atrocious. He shot 2-of-16 from the field with 10 turnovers in the two games, both 20-plus point losses in Oklahoma City.

You can play this type of small-ball defense when you have someone of worth playing defense in the low post. In the loss to Minnesota, that came in the form of Karl-Anthony Towns. In the Thunder series, as interesting as it might be, Kevin Durant has played the role of rim protector.

Oklahoma City now travels to Oakland for Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals on Thursday night. It has an opportunity to end the defending champion’s season.

And if that were to happen, Billy Donovan and Co. surely do owe the Wolves a thank you.

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