Timberwolves Race Out Early, Trail Pistons 65-58 at Halftime in Preseason Test at Target Center

MINNEAPOLIS

For one quarter on Wednesday night, the Minnesota Timberwolves looked like a team with nothing left to figure out. Then the second quarter started, and the Detroit Pistons reminded everyone in Target Center that October basketball is a moving target. At halftime of their NBA preseason meeting — this is a live snapshot, checked against the ESPN scoreboard at 6:33 PM PT — Detroit leads Minnesota 65-58, after the Timberwolves took the first quarter 38-29 and the Pistons stormed back to win the second 36-20. The score will keep moving after this story publishes; the Previously live scores page carries the finish.

That split personality is exactly what the preseason is for, and it is why this game matters more than its place on the calendar suggests. Minnesota came in at 3-1 in exhibition play, Detroit at 1-1, and with the regular season opening on Tuesday, October 20 — six days from now — every remaining minute of the preseason is an audition. The first half at Target Center offered two completely different auditions in the space of 24 minutes, and the second half now becomes a rotation battle with real jobs attached to it.

A Tale of Two Quarters

Minnesota’s opening quarter was the kind of burst the home crowd came to see. The Timberwolves put up 38 points in the first 12 minutes, pushing the pace, sharing the ball and building a nine-point cushion against a Detroit team that was still finding its legs. Jaden McDaniels set an early tone for the hosts and reached the break as Minnesota’s leading scorer with 12 points, according to the ESPN gamecast, a useful sign for a player whose two-way role keeps growing in importance for this roster.

Detroit’s answer was emphatic. The Pistons outscored Minnesota 36-20 in the second quarter, turning a nine-point deficit into a seven-point halftime lead, and they did it behind a frontcourt performance that Minnesota had no answer for before the break. Jalen Duren poured in 24 first-half points to lead all scorers, punishing the Timberwolves inside, while Cade Cunningham conducted the offense with 8 assists by halftime. When a young Pistons core clicks like that — the franchise center finishing everything and the franchise guard bending the defense until it breaks — you can see the outline of the team Detroit believes it is becoming.

Where Minnesota Stands in the Final Week

The broader preseason picture for Minnesota remains encouraging, one rough quarter notwithstanding. The Timberwolves arrived at 3-1 on the strength of a productive week: a 122-104 win over the New York Knicks on October 12 and a 125-124 thriller over the Miami Heat on October 10, results listed by Sportradar. Those are the kinds of October wins that tell a coaching staff the top of the rotation is close to ready — the offense traveled, the closing group executed late against Miami, and the team’s identity survived contact with two playoff-caliber opponents.

What the final week of the preseason decides is everything underneath that top group. Coaches across the league use these last exhibitions to settle the second unit, and Wednesday’s second half is precisely the laboratory for it. Which bench combinations can hold a lead when the starters sit? Which young players can be trusted to defend their position for eight straight minutes without fouling? Who takes the shots when the first two options are denied? A 36-20 quarter against your reserves is not a crisis in October, but it is information, and Minnesota’s staff will treat the film from that second quarter as exactly that.

The Second Half Is the Story

Expect the second half at Target Center to look less like a game and more like an evaluation. Starters on both sides typically see their minutes trimmed as the preseason winds toward its close, and that hands the night to the players fighting for the final rotation spots. For Minnesota, that is the most consequential storyline in the building: a team with genuine ambitions in the Western Conference cannot afford a thin bench, and nights like this one — against a physical, confident young opponent in Detroit — are how thin benches get found out or get fixed.

Detroit, for its part, gets to test something too: whether a young team can protect a lead on the road. The Pistons entered at 1-1 in the preseason, and a second-half closeout in a loud building, even an exhibition one, is a rep their core needs. If Duren and Cunningham watch most of the finish from the bench, the Pistons’ own reserves inherit the exam Minnesota’s are taking — hold the line, run the offense, do not give the game back.

What Comes Next

Whatever the final score says, both teams leave Wednesday one step closer to the games that count. The preseason closes this week, the regular season opens on October 20, and the questions that decide Octobers — depth, health, chemistry in the second unit — are being answered in real time in buildings like Target Center. Minnesota’s fans have reason to like most of what they have seen this month: a 3-1 start to the exhibition slate, two wins over quality opponents in the past four days, and a first quarter on Wednesday that showed the ceiling. The second quarter showed the homework.

Follow the finish and the rest of the night’s board on the live scores page, catch up with the full evening in our live preseason roundup, and keep the NBA hub and the Previously sports hub close as the October 20 opener approaches.