Monday night, Josh Okogie levitated. He had just completed a 1-on-4 fast break with a wrist-bending dunk, and as he held on to the rim to keep from flying into Target Center’s expensive seats, Okogie found equipoise, suspending horizontally about 9 feet above the hardwood.
Karl-Anthony Towns screamed. Bench players danced. Andrew Wiggins awoke. The arena hummed.
For a franchise locked in a perpetual battle with inertia, Okogie is, to quote one of this century’s greatest thinkers, manna from heaven. In one energetic stretch Monday, he turned a steal into that gravity-taunting dunk, blocked a shot, started a break and fed Gorgui Dieng for a dunk, dunked a contested alley-oop and produced a steal that led to a Towns dunk.