Wolves Stun Thunder, End Streak at 12

The Oklahoma City Thunder arrived in Minneapolis on a blustery Wednesday night with high hopes of continuing their franchise record 12-game winning streak. Little did they know, the Timberwolves had different plans for them this Holiday season.

A dominant win? Probably not, but Oklahoma City never managed to lead in Thursday night's thriller. The T-Wolves pulled off the upset 99-93 behind a solid team effort. Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic peppered the Thunder front court from start to finish and a 4th quarter takeover from the 5'10" J.J. Barea helped hold off a late surge from Oklahoma City in front of a raucous 17,000 at the Target Center.

Barea scored 14 of his 18 points in the 4th quarter, including a trio of 3-pointers in a span of about 90 seconds. Love and Pekovic combined for 52 points and 21 rebounds, but it was the things that didn't necessarily show up on the stat sheet that helped the Wolves secure a win. J.J. Barea ended up in an incredible mismatch late in the 4th quarter, guarding Kevin Durant with just 2 and half minutes left. Everyone watching had to assume we were about to see Durant put on a clinic. Instead, Barea was able to draw an offensive foul on Durant. The normally calm and cool Durant, let the ref know what he thought of the call and in turn received a technical foul. The Wolves handled it from there.

Much has been made of PG Russell Westbrook's improvement, but on Thursday night he was anything but perfect. Westbrook managed to score 30 points, but not before turning the ball over 9 times and missing 19 shots from the field. Kevin Durant essentially scored at will with 33 points, shooting 43% from the field and going 8-8 from the Free Throw line. Serge Ibaka made his presence known in the paint with 5 blocks and 9 rebounds.

Ricky Rubio saw his standard 18 minutes again last night, but struggled to find his groove tallying only 3 assists and zero points. The Minnesota faithful all held their breath mid-way through the second quarter when Rubio seemed to hurt his knee again. It turned out to be his "good" knee and ended up being only a stinger. Rubio's conditioning has head coach Rick Adelman limiting his playing time at the moment, but the Wolves hope to see him back in the starting lineup very soon. In the meantime, the Wolves will look to build off of their win over the Western Conference's #1 team and start a winning streak of their own.

The Timberwolves play the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m.