In the final moments of 2025, the Minnesota Timberwolves put forth one of their worst efforts in a long time against the Atlanta Hawks. In the first quarter alone, the Wolves gave up eight offensive rebounds and 16 points in the paint in a first half they were outscored 70-49.
At halftime on the Wolves broadcast, assistant coach Micah Nori called it, “probably the worst half of basketball in five years since we’ve been here.”
It’s hard to disagree with Nori as the Wolves got destroyed by a Hawks team
that had lost their last seven games coming into the day. At no point did Minnesota show any interest in winning the game, as they played like a team that had half their mind on their New Year’s Eve party.
In what felt like deja vu, I walked into a Wolves postgame media session trying to figure out why the team has struggled to find any sort of consistency from game to game. Just four days earlier at Target Center, we in the Wolves media tried to answer that very question as the Wolves got whipped off the floor by a 9-19 Brooklyn Nets team.
There are only so many questions you can ask after games like these before it just feels like you are yelling, “What the hell?” It has unfortunately become an all-too-familiar pattern of this era of Timberwolves teams that their effort level can wax and wane depending on their opponent on any given night. On New Year’s Eve, that gave a Hawks team without Trae Young an opportunity to grab.
“Do we care?” That was the question Rudy Gobert asked after the blowout loss in Atlanta. Gobert went on to elaborate on where he sees the team currently.
“Do we care? Does something happen when we like we played the first quarter tonight? Or is it just cool? Make a lot of money, we play basketball, do what we do and go home and be happy. I think that’s the fine line between a team that’s playing for a championship and a team that’s full of talent but doesn’t accomplish shit.”
When asked how he feels the team has played recently, Gobert responded, “Not like a team that wants to play for a championship. That’s for sure.”
Donte DiVincenzo echoed much of what Gobert said, explaining how it is one of the Wolves players to find more consistency from night to night.
“How many meetings, how many film sessions, how many times has Finchy had to talk to us? It’s just frustrating because you go out in Chicago, you play well, you respond, and then you come in here and lay an egg.”
The game against the Hawks is an interesting inflection point for the Wolves, not just because it wrapped up the 2025 calendar, but it also brought the return of Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who was a huge part of each of the last two Western Conference Finals Timberwolves teams.
NAW and the Wolves went through everything together the past couple of seasons. After unsuccessful stints in New Orleans and Utah, Nickeil revived his career in Minnesota, proving he could be a productive member of a playoff roster.
It wasn’t just on the court that NAW found a connection, as off the court, many of his Timberwolves teammates, along with himself, happened to become fathers within months of each other in 2024 and 2025.
I caught up with NAW before Wednesday’s game, and it became clear that Nickeil was thankful for his time in Minnesota and found that the New Year’s Eve matchup with his old team was a nice full-circle moment to complete his 2025 journey.
The Timberwolves really miss Nickeil’s game on the court. Not just because many of their young guys have not panned out 34 games into the season, but because his consistent effort and focus each game is something this team sorely lacks.
Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch described the ways the Wolves have missed NAW’s presence before Wednesday’s game.
“We miss him. We miss that high level of competitiveness every night. The consistency that he brought. I used to refer to him as a utility infielder. You could do whatever you needed him to do on any given night.”
If the Wolves want to be a contender for the championship, the night-to-night effort needs to be far more consistent than it has been this season. As it stands now, the status quo isn’t working. Their valleys of poor play are too low, and despite some high-highs, they are too far and in-between to be consistently counted on come the playoffs.
While the Wolves sit as the sixth seed in the Western Conference, the same position that they made the Western Conference a season ago, it seems improbable or impossible for the Wolves to defeat teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder or Denver Nuggets without something changing.
When asked if changes to the rotation were on the table, Finch responded, “No, no, no. We’ve been flipping rotations around all season,” signaling that the Wolves do not expect any drastic changes with who will play on any given night, at least in the short-term future.
Despite being right on pace for their preseason projection of 50 wins, the Wolves feel like they are on unstable ground. While they have many roster holes, including no backup center and a point guard rotation that is either unproven or aging out of the league, their biggest weakness is themselves.
Too many games look like the one they played tonight, where they either give themselves no chance to win by how they start the game, or make things so much more difficult than they ever needed to be. While that may not matter in the regular season, as the Wolves are still heavy favorites to secure a top-six seed, they will need to find greater consistency before the end of the regular season, as “flipping the switch” is not a legitimate strategy given the strength of opponents in the Western Conference.
Ultimately, the Wolves are still less than halfway through their season, so there is still time to figure out their issues, but as the calendar flips to the new year, and Auld Lang Syne echoes inside my Atlanta hotel room, the Timberwolves find themselves at a crossroads. Are they going to bring the requisite effort each game, or will their inconsistent play hold them back in 2026?
