MINNEAPOLIS _ The Memphis Grizzlies dressed only nine men Monday at Target Center. Many of those would have gone unrecognized in a lineup. Their list of players not playing was nearly as long as the active roster.
Still, it was hard.
Monday, the team's crucial penultimate regular season game, the Wolves came out cold, trailed by as many as 10 in the first half, played most of the game without the injured Taj Gibson and with Karl-Anthony Towns battling foul trouble.
But they did enough to win 113-94, doing their part to stay in the Western Conference playoff race with Wednesday's regular season finale against the Denver Nuggets looming.
A 15-0 second-quarter run erased that deficit, giving the Wolves a three-point halftime lead. The Wolves (46-35) extended that lead to eight after three quarters, then _ finally _ put it away in the fourth.
The Wolves shot 30.8 percent in the first 12 minutes, but picked up the pace, finishing at 48.3.
It took just about everybody.
The Wolves got 24 points and 18 rebounds from Towns. Point guard Jeff Teague scored 24 points with eight assists, taking repeated forays into the paint. Butler had 15 points in 23 minutes.
And then there was the bench, which scored 36 points. With Gibson out, Gorgui Dieng stepped up and had 11 points and six rebounds in 17 minutes. Derrick Rose was particularly effective, scoring 13.
The Grizzlies were led by Ben McLemore's 18 points, one of five Memphis players in double figures. Dillon Brooks had 15. Ivan Rabb and MarShon Brooks had 14 each.
The Wolves led by as many as 19 in the fourth quarter.
But talk about your inauspicious starts.
Against a Memphis team all banged up _ even center Marc Gasol, resting on the back end of back-to-back games didn't play _ the Wolves struggled badly out of the gate.
They missed 17 of their first 23 shots, turned the ball over three times and didn't rebound particularly well on the defensive end.
That's a bad combination.
Up 14-12 in the first quarter, the Wolves allowed the Grizzlies to go on a 12-0 run to take a 24-14 lead on Omari Johnson's basket.
Finally the Wolves bench woke the team up. A bit. Down 10 points, Jamal Crawford hit a basket. Gorgui Dieng hit a free throw, then a corner 3-pointer as the Wolves pulled within 26-20 at quarter's end.
Still, with 9:02 left in the half, after Ivan Rabb made two free throws for the Grizzlies, Memphis led by nine, 37-28.
Finally the Wolves put something together.
Towns had eight points and Butler had five in a 15-0 run that turned that nine-point deficit into a 43-37 lead on Towns' dunk with 5:32 left in the quarter.
The Wolves defense had picked up; the Grizzlies went more than 10 minutes in the quarter without a field goal _ Memphis scored 11 of its 27 second-quarter points from the line _ but Minnesota's offense again sputtered a bit.
Memphis rallied to tie the score on McLemore's driving layup with 2:21 left. But Wiggins' three-point play put the Wolves back up three, and that was the final margin at halftime, Wolves leading 56-53.
The Wolves were leading 60-57 early in the third when they went on a 15-6 run _ with eight of those coming from the free throw line and four each coming from Teague and Butler _ to take a 75-63 lead on Dieng's corner 3-pointer. But that lead was down to eight, 83-75, after the Grizzlies finished the quarter 12-8.
