Minnesota Timberwolves guard Donte DiVincenzo is believed to have suffered a torn Achilles tendon in right leg, ending his postseason run. DiVincenzo went down with a non-contact injury in the early goings of his team’s 112-96 Game 4 victory vs. the Denver Nuggets.
“I feel completely devastated for Donte,” Minnesota head coach Chris Finch said. “He was playing so well. He’s had such a great season. He’s the heart [and] soul of so many things that we do. You can just see the look in his eye when it happened, and you kind of knew.”
“We love him, and we’ll be there for him.”
The 29 year old has been a key component of the Timberwolves lineup this season, starting all 82 regular season games for the team. His 244 made three pointers were good for 6th most in the NBA this season as he averaged 12.2pts per contest while shooting 37.9% from beyond the arc.
Making matters worse, superstar Anthony Edwards also departed Game 4 after appearing to tweak his left knee while landing near the rim.
“Losing those two guys was really tough. Tough emotionally for the guys,” Finch said. “We regrouped well. I thought the key was just hanging in there until we get to halftime and kind of reset things, figure out what we have and who we have going forward. We were able to find our offensive rhythm. … Just play after play after play, we really had a team effort, everybody chipped in.”
Despite losing two starters, the T-Wolves managed to rally in the 2nd half and pull away for the victory to claim a 3-1 series lead. Ayo Dosunmu poured in a career high 43 points to help mount the comeback, putting Nikola Jokic and Co. on the ropes in their first round series.
Still, a veteran heavy Nuggets lineup is far from out of the contest, and Game 5 will now have the very real possibility that Minnesota could be down two starters. Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon played just 23 minutes after sitting out Game 3 of the series, but appears to be getting healthier.
His availability for a do or die Game 5 could be the determining factor as to whether his team advances or is kicking off their offseason earlier than they would have hoped.
The Nuggets and Timberwolves will have Sunday off before travelling to Denver for a 10:30pm ET tip off.
Photo: Amy Mingo. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.