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'Bound to happen': Timberwolves react to brawl against Pistons
Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards talks to center Rudy Gobert (27) during the first quarter against the Detroit Pistons at Target Center in Minneapolis on March 30, 2025. Matt Krohn-Imagn Images

Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch knew where Sunday's game against the Detroit Pistons was headed. It was a physical game — a little too physical. It just felt like a game where it was only a matter of time before tempers boiled over.

Finch's intuition was right. After Naz Reid was fouled on a drive to the basket midway through the second quarter, he was exchanging words with Ron Holland II. Then Holland and Donte DiVincenzo started exchanging shoves. Chaos ensued and it turned into a full-blown brawl that extended into the courtside seats behind the Wolves basket. It resulted in seven ejections — five players and two coaches — between the two sides, with suspensions likely to follow in the coming days.

"Two guys went at it, and it spilled over into the crowd, which is super dangerous," Finch said after his Timberwolves rallied for a 123-104 victory over the Pistons at Target Center. "Obviously, it just kept escalating and escalating, mostly from their side, to be honest with you. And I thought leading up to that, that the game was way too physical. I thought it was a little lopsided in its physicality. And I thought that it was bound to happen. ... I just thought it got to a point where players were going to take matters into their own hands. You don't ever want that. And just a lot of antics alongside of it, too."

Reid, DiVincenzo and assistant coach Pablo Prigioni were ejected for the Wolves, while Holland, Marcus Sasser, Isaiah Stewart and head coach J.B. Bickerstaff were ejected for the Pistons. Finch said that Prigioni was ejected after trying to talk to one of the officials about a player on the Pistons they felt routinely found himself in these type of situations. That was something that Bickerstaff took issue with, and those two exchanged words, ultimately resulting in ejections for both.

"I didn't see anything necessarily worthy of an ejection that (Prigioni) did," Finch said.

DiVincenzo signaled to the crowd to much applause as he left the court.

"I'm proud of Donte," said Anthony Edwards, before correcting himself. "I'm not proud. I love Donte."

Rudy Gobert said it was difficult to see anything from his vantage point, seeing simply "a bunch of bodies." Mike Conley didn't see how the fight started, but tried to break up the scrum and get his teammates out from the bottom of the pile.

"It's like one of those football piles where you just don't know what's going on underneath, so we were just trying to break it up as fast as we could and prevent our guys from missing games and stuff like that," Conley said. "But it's a part of the game. It's been a part of the game for a long time, the emotional part, and it happens."

In any respect, the scrum appeared to provide the Wolves some energy as they rallied from a 10-point deficit at the time of the brawl and turned it into a 19-point win. Edwards, Gobert and Julius Randle were the drivers of the comeback effort.

"I think sometimes when something like that happens, it either makes or breaks you, and for us, it was something that gave us a little boost of energy," said Gobert, who finished with 19 points and a whopping 25 rebounds.

The only issue is the possibility of suspensions looming for the ejected players.

"I don't think they should miss games for that, maybe just some money," Edwards said.

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This article first appeared on FanNation All Timberwolves and was syndicated with permission.

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