Warriors vs. Timberwolves player grades: Steph Curry turns back the clock

After Saturday’s loss, which moved them to 0-3, I sure didn’t expect the Golden State Warriors to have a decent-looking record anytime soon. They had a brutal schedule facing them, and it seemed likely that they’d return to San Francisco still winless.

Instead, they won the road trip, and head home with a chance to get to .500 on Friday night. Wednesday’s 119-114 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves was far from perfect, but it was, most importantly, a win. So let’s grade the players who got it done. As always, grades are based on my expectations for each player, with a “B” grade representing the average performance for that player.

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Note: True-shooting percentage (TS) is a scoring efficiency metric that accounts for threes and free throws. Last year, league-average TS was 58.1%.

Yaxel Lendeborg

35 minutes, 26 points, 9 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, 1 block, 7 turnovers, 3 fouls, 11-for-20 shooting, 2-for-5 threes, 2-for-4 free throws, 59.7% TS, +2

As I reminder, I grade each player based on my expectations for them. And because of that, Lendeborg is easily the hardest Warrior to grade at the moment. Why? Because I’m simply not sure what my expectations are, or should be!

In just his fifth career game, he had an efficient 26 points and nine rebounds, while playing strong defense on Jonathan Kuminga. If you had told me that before the season started, I would have said it was an easy A at the very least … and probably an A+.

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But Lendeborg played so well over the first week of his professional career that the expectations are already beginning to change. On the one hand, it’s unfair to judge him more harshly in just his fifth contest. On the other hand, he’s doing stuff like this, and it’s absolutely altering the equation:

So seen through that lens, we need to address the bad: Lendeborg turned the ball over seven times, and plenty of those turnovers were the type that could — and should — be avoided. He had some breakdowns late in the game, where he got the ball in critical moments and was unable to get off a good shot or make a quick pass. All of his free throws came when the Warriors were…

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Publish date : 2026-10-29 05:02:00

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