The Timberwolves will win the first championship trophy in team history? It is due to Butler s law, wait and see

Now, looking back at the Timberwolves trade in last year's offseason, the operation of the Timberwolves trade for Randall, which truly achieved a win-win situation. It can be regarded as a talk -

Last October, the Timberwolves, the Knicks and the Hornets completed a three-party deal. Since then, Towns joined the Knicks, and Randall has changed his goal and airborne the Minnesota. The playoffs are in full swing. With the glorious ending of the tiebreak in the Western Conference Semi-Finals today, all four teams in the East and West Finals were born - the Thunder Timberwolves made an appointment to play on the Western Conference Finals stage, while the two teams in the East Finals are the New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers. The reason why the New York Knicks traded Randle is undoubtedly due to the weak performance in the past playoffs. However, this year's playoffs, Randle changed his weakness and became one of the biggest contributors to the Timberwolves' victory.

The Timberwolves faced the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round and faced the Purple and Gold Army, which has two major stars James Doncic, Randle averaged 22+5+4 per game, and finally led the team to a 4-1 big scorer without bloodshed. In the second round, facing the Golden State Warriors who own Curry and Butler, Randall remained strong, averaging 25.2 points, 6.6 rebounds and 7.4 assists per game in five games, and his shooting percentage increased to 53% + 39% + 89%, which was a step further than the first round of the 100-foot pole.

It is worth mentioning that in the second round of the Warriors G4, Randle scored 31 points and 11 assists in the whole game, and the offense was simply worthy of it. The Warriors had no resistance to play and disarmed early.

Timberwolves ended the series early and looked forward to the West Finals opponent. Today, the Thunder finally came late, and the West Finals winner will undoubtedly solve the championship trophy closer.

Looking at the match between the two teams in history, the time is so far away that it is almost forgotten by people. It needs to be traced back to the long 27 years ago - the first round of the 1998 playoffs. At that time, the competition system was still 5 games and 3 wins. The Timberwolves met on a narrow road. At that time, the Thunder team was still called Supersonics. In the end, the Supersonics narrowly defeated the Timberwolves 3-2 and advanced to the second round.

Looking at the history of the two teams' regular season confrontation, the Thunder clearly had the upper hand - the two teams had a total of 140 confrontations, of which the Thunder won 92 and lost 48, with a great chance of winning.

And this season (2024-25 season), the two teams tied four times in the regular season, each winning two games, and it seemed to be evenly matched.

Let's compare the two teams' advancement to the Western Conference. It is obvious that the number one Thunder in the West has a big ups and downs, while the Timberwolves have the momentum to wait for their hard work.

Thunder swept the Grizzlies 4-0 in the first round, and eliminated the difficult Nuggets 4-3 in the second round;

, and the Timberwolves eliminated the Lakers 4-1 in the first round, and defeated the Warriors 4-1 in the second round, which can be said to have won the series without any blood.

27 years later, the two teams met again to start the Western Conference Final. Is it a repeat of history or a Timberwolves' killing to take revenge?

Finally, looking back at the NBA's championship in recent years, a mysterious fact came out -

It is not difficult to find that 5 of the NBA's recent six championships defeated Butler's team and finally won the championship.

The five teams are as follows:

2019 championship Raptors (beating Butler in the Eastern Semi-decision);

2020 championship Lakers (beating Butler in the Finals);

2021 championship Bucks (beating Butler in the first round);

2023 championship Nuggets (beating Butler in the finals);

2024 championship Celtics (beating Butler in the first round).

The only exception is also very related to Butler - in 2022, the Celtics defeated Butler in the East Finals, facing the Warriors in the finals, they were defeated by a big score of 2-4 and returned in a defeat.

Don't forget that the Timberwolves easily defeated the Warriors whom Butler played for 4-1 in the second round.