Timberwolves caught a glimpse of postseason atmosphere in loss to Dallas

The NBA playoffs don't officially begin until next month, but for the Timberwolves, who are trying to get to the No. 6 seed and avoid the play-in tournament, the playoffs have already started in a way.

The atmosphere in Monday's loss to Dallas was like few other games the Wolves have played this season — an intense crowd, swings of emotion on every possession.

"I love that environment. This is what I hope for," guard Jaylen Nowell said. "I don't like going out there and playing with half energy, half anything. At the end of the day, it was a great game, that's a great team and I enjoyed that game."

The Wolves have little margin for error if they want to finish in the sixth seed, given how well Dallas and Denver have played the second half of the season. The Wolves entered Wednesday's matchup with Phoenix one game back of Denver for the sixth seed and have one more matchup against the Nuggets next week. Dallas, which was 2 ½ games ahead of the Wolves for the fifth seed, comes to Minnesota on Friday.

Coach Chris Finch said he thought the Wolves took some time to adjust to the level of play against Dallas.

"We've got to up our readiness against these really, really good teams," Finch said. "The Dallas game is a great example. We talk playoff-like intensity and atmosphere — we've got to be ready for that. We don't have a lot of guys that have played in that type of atmosphere consistently, so we get a little bit of a flavor for it."

One thing the Wolves did against Dallas was come out in a drop coverage. It didn't prevent Mavericks center Dwight Powell from torching the Wolves for 22 points. Powell, who averages 8.2 points per game, was 8-for-8 from the field.

As the game went on, the Wolves moved away from drop coverage, which involves Karl-Anthony Towns retreating to the basket on screens, and back to their "high wall" coverage, where Towns is more aggressive defending screens and the Wolves are more active to recover behind him.

"I definitely think that's one of our best defenses right now," Nowell said. "I think we get a lot of stops with those. So I think when we do that, when we're in that type of defense, we do tend to get a lot more stops."

Even though the high wall defense has been the Wolves' most consistent over the course of the season, they still want to vary their coverages for a playoff push.

"As for the playoffs — I've never been to the playoffs — but I mean that's a whole different ball game," Nowell said. "We're going to have to be able to play all different types of defenses. That's why we're kind of going away from that, trying to see what else we can improve on."

Towns again entered the night questionable because of a right forearm contusion, and Finch said Towns' recovery from it has been "two steps forward, one step back" but added Towns was "persevering" and playing through it.