Minnesota and Portland played in the final NBA game played prior to the all-star break — a 9 p.m. Central time start in Oregon.

That type of tipoff is just asking for teams to check out and think more about vacations or upcoming festivities than the actual on-court product.

But as they’ve done for 90 percent of the season to date, the Timberwolves locked in on the task at hand. At least they did so enough in Thursday’s 128-91 win over the Blazers.

Minnesota (39-16) jumped out to a 44-14 first quarter lead, seemingly lost interest for the next quarter and a half, and then put its foot back down on the accelerator to close out the victory.

As it turns out, a team whose season is going nowhere fast is much more likely to check out early than a championship contender.

The Wolves did appear to think Portland (15-39) would lay down after Minnesota jumped out to such a large advantage. But Portland — which won the second quarter by 15 points — took advantage of two quarters of sloppy, unmotivated Wolves play to trim the deficit to as few as eight.

Their advantage shrinking to single digits woke the Wolves up. Anthony Edwards hit a few shots and Minnesota’s defense clamped down. It didn’t take long before the rout was officially back on.

Edwards finished with 34 points, seven assists and six boards. All five Wolves starters scored in double figures as the Wolves shot 51 percent from the field while holding Portland to 37 percent shooting.

Thursday was another reminder of how few minutes of excellent basketball are required to embarrass terrible teams, and it only supplied further confusion as to how Minnesota lost to so many cellar-dwellers last season. But that’s long behind the Wolves, who enter the all-star break as the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference.

While many of the players on the roster depart for all-star vacations — which will be one or two days shorter than those of other players in the NBA, whose all-star breaks started much earlier than Minnesota’s — Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns and the Wolves coaching staff are off to Indianapolis to soak up the accolades earned by a team consistently downing teams like the lowly Trail Blazers and contending Clippers en route to an entirely impressive pre-all-star season.