After Minnesota’s resounding Game 1 win on Saturday to claim a 1-0 advantage over the Los Angeles Lakers, Anthony Edwards was asked what the message was to the world after pundits across the globe had widely picked L.A. to win the first-round playoff series.

“No message, man,” Edwards said. “They still got the Lakers. Lakers supposed to win. That’s how it’s supposed to go and how it’s supposed to be.”

It’s debatable whether that’s still true. Minnesota has received plenty of praise in the wake of its impressive performance to open the series, and is now the betting favorite on all sportsbooks to topple the Lakers.

But it’s in the best interest of the Timberwolves to believe otherwise. What’s particularly interesting about the Timberwolves is the degree to which they know that to be true.

Wolves guard Mike Conley recently lauded his team’s ability to meet any challenge.

“We’re a team that plays well when we’re looking up, and fight our way and claw our way up a hill,” Conley said. “We understand with our back against the wall, we’re a much more dangerous team in our minds.”

Which is a great trait, as seen in last Saturday’s victory. Minnesota was on its P’s and Q’s in Game 1. The Wolves were as sharp as they’ve been on all season on both ends of the floor, particularly over the final three quarters.

That was the team many envisioned pushing the Thunder to win the Western Conference at the season’s outset. It’s why the Wolves were such a frustrating and confusing watch throughout the regular season. Because the team that took the floor over the first five months of the season rarely looked like the one that trounced the Lakers.

When Minnesota believed it was destined for the play-in tournament, it went on a 17-4 tear over its final 21 games to nab a top-six seed. Some of that strong close to the season had to do with Minnesota’s roster — reconfigured just two days before the start of training camp — meshing at the right time. But the urgency with which the team played was also palpable.

Ideally, of course, the team could deliver that same brand of basketball regardless.

“Sometimes when we get too much love and attention, we get a little bit soft and lazy,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said in the hours ahead of Game 1.

There’s a lot of evidence behind that assertion. Even just this season, the schedule brought Minnesota to California immediately after the Wolves used a thrilling fourth-quarter rally to down Oklahoma City in overtime. The next day, Finch and numerous Wolves players made in-person appearances on national programs.

And then proceeded to drop their next two games.

“We are our biggest opponent. We get a little complacent. When people start saying we’re good, and when the odds are with us, that’s when we’re not as good,” Wolves center Rudy Gobert noted at the end of March. “It happened last year in the playoffs. The odds had us losing every series. As soon as the odds had us winning (against Dallas in the West finals), we didn’t.”

That was prevalent at a more granular level within the Western Conference semifinals. Minnesota was not picked by many to down the defending champs in Denver, but then the Wolves took Game 1. Gobert’s absence in Game 2 made Minnesota a heavy underdog again, and the Wolves ran roughshod over the Nuggets.

Heading back to Minnesota armed with a 2-0 series lead, a sweep felt almost inevitable. But Minnesota’s tenacity dipped noticeably and the Wolves dropped the next three games. The urgency returned in Game 6 for another dominant win and, finally, Minnesota put the Nuggets away in Game 7 — but only after an indifferent first-half performance that left the Wolves trailing by 20 in the third quarter.

After that second-half performance in Denver, Wolves assistant coach Micah Nori noted, “Fear is a hell of a motivator.”

“Fear of your season being over,” Nori said. “Fear of just not performing and going out the way that you would want to.”

That fear, that urgency, was all present in Minnesota’s performance Saturday in Los Angeles.

“I know we wanted it more,” Naz Reid said after the game. “That’s kind of how it has to be, especially when you’re the underdog.”

Minnesota is one of the best underdogs in basketball. It’s .500 record this season when playing as an underdog (10-10), per Sportsbook odds, was only bested by Oklahoma City, which was 2-1. Minnesota also had the second-best performance against the Vegas spread this season when playing as an underdog, behind only Cleveland.

The Wolves do not like to be discounted, but they play their best when they are.

“I think we have a lot of guys in this locker room that have been underdogs their whole life,” Gobert said. “It’s a position that we embrace, and I think we embrace it individually and collectively.”

The challenge for this group is to maintain that same mindset even when things are going well. The Wolves certainly don’t need to win Game 2 on Tuesday (in which they are still an underdog), but can they play as though they do?

Because while Minnesota ultimately won the Denver series a year ago, there’s a strong case to be made that the mid-series slump — which forced Minnesota to play seven grueling, energy-sapping games — ultimately cost the Wolves an NBA Finals appearance.

That’s not a mistake you want to make twice.

“Experience is real. It’s a real thing — especially when you can kind of keep it within a same eight or nine guys who go through it together,” Conley said. “You immediately remember things. You immediately remember Luka destroying us last season and what happened in the conference championship. You immediately remember Milwaukee a week ago when we lost a game up 24. … Those things pop in your mind and you immediately try to be like, ‘What do we got to do different?’ Right now, it’s one game, and move onto the next one.”

“It’s on us to fix our own odds,” Gobert said. “We’ve been through it for the last few years, so by now we know that it’s just about us.”