Ricky Rubio missed a second consecutive game, Blake Griffin was almost impossible to stop, and Adreian Payne was -15 in eight minutes, but the Timberwolves were not out of this game until the bitter end.
When the news that Ricky Rubio would be inactive for this game hit the Twitter wires before tip, it would have been easy to write this off as a simple loss to a better team. The Los Angeles Clippers, while only 8-8 on the season, still have all the pieces of a dominant offensive team, and in many ways the fact that this game stayed close all the way to the end is an enormous credit to most of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who did eventually lose this game 107-99.