Kirk Goldsberry frequently releases an “efficiency landscape” graph on social media that shows where all 30 NBA teams are in terms of offensive and defensive rating in relation to one another over the course of their past 10 games.

Heading into the all-star break, Minnesota resides in the top right quadrant, above all others. The Timberwolves are 7-3 over their past 10 games, but they’ve outscored opponents by 14.3 points per 100 possessions in that span, easily the best mark in the NBA.

In that timeframe, they sport the league’s best defense and fifth-best offense. Every win but one — an impressive road victory over the Thunder in Oklahoma City — has come by double-digits, and the three losses were due to late-game collapses in games during which Minnesota looked like the better team for the majority of the night.

The Timberwolves’ average margin of victory during their current four-game winning streak is 23.5 points. They are again demonstrating the dominance they delivered on a near-nightly basis through the first third of the season.

“It feels like we’ve got that swagger back that we had before Christmas, or up to that point in time,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch told reporters after Thursday’s 37-point win in Portland. “Again, it’s all defensive-led, but now we have an offensive purpose, and everyone is really contributing there. So it does feel like we’ve found a whole other gear, and now we just have to try and maintain that after the break.”

It’s not an easy feat, as Minnesota’s post-Christmas play proved. The level at which the Timberwolves played to open the season, and again the past couple of weeks, requires an effort and focus level that is difficult to achieve for one game, let alone every game.

But that the Timberwolves have reached that level for multiple stretches now is a potential indication that they are indeed who they are as a team – one of the best teams in the Western Conference, and currently the one in the driver’s seat to nail down the top seed in the playoffs.

“At the end of the day, we have destiny in our hands,” center Rudy Gobert told reporters this week.

Indeed, the Timberwolves will return from the all-star break next week with a seven-game homestand that includes four games in which the Wolves likely will be double-digit favorites and three games — including a nationally-televised tilt Friday against Milwaukee — against playoff-caliber teams.

“We can’t come out happy and fat,” Finch said. “We just have to stay hungry.”

And maintain that edge that took awhile for the Timberwolves to re-establish. In some ways, the all-star break is coming at a terrible time for a Timberwolves team that had again found its groove.

But, if this really is who the Wolves are, it shouldn’t take them long to achieve such a standard again next week.

“I want them to enjoy (the break), to recognize what we’ve done so far and why we’ve been successful,” Finch said. “And then I want them to come back laser-focused. We talked about how important seven games at home coming out of the break is. It sets up nicely for us, and we have to take advantage of that. We’ve got a heck of a push coming up. We play a bunch of teams that are right there with us, and there’s going to be swing games.”

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