For many franchises, a Saturday afternoon game with a packed house against an Eastern Conference Play-in team would be a recipe for the best game of the season. For the Minnesota Timberwolves, it’s a setup for disaster, as was the case for today’s game against the Orlando Magic.
Anthony Edwards started the game off scorching hot, scoring the first ten points of the game for the Timberwolves, totaling 17 for the first quarter. The buckets from Edwards came from all over the floor. He put in four free
throws, a pair of midrange jumpers, and three 3-pointers.
The Wolves took as large as an eight-point lead in the second quarter before their offense completely fell silent. Through the final 7:30 of the first half, the Wolves shot 2-15 from the field and 0-9 from beyond the arc, including a nearly five-minute scoreless stretch in which the Magic went on a 16-0 run.
Despite Edwards’s hot shooting in the first quarter, he went scoreless in the second quarter, missing all three of his shot attempts as Minnesota trailed 60-50 heading into halftime. Edwards was asked after the game as to what went wrong in the second quarter, but didn’t have many answers.
“We were getting okay shots. I thought we rushed those a little bit,” Timberwolves Head Coach Chris Finch said of the offensive issues in the second quarter. “We were kind of wild in transition. We needed to calm down and convert a couple of those. And then we just kept looking for like home run plays and shortcuts and stuff like that.”
The opening of the second half wasn’t much friendlier for the Wolves, but this time it was their defense that was the problem. Minnesota allowed Orlando to make 9 of their first 13 shots coming out of halftime as the lead grew to as many as 20 points.
There was a flicker of hope late in the third quarter when the Wolves went on an 11-0 run to cut the deficit to nine points, but Minnesota’s offense fell back off the wagon, missing seven of their next eight shots. From there, the Magic built their lead back up to 20 points, and by the midway point of the fourth quarter, the game was out of reach.
The Timberwolves went on to lose by a final score of 119-92, their second-largest loss of the season. Jaden McDaniels and Donte DiVicenzo struggled the most in the game as they combined to go 0-15 from the floor. Add in Ayo Dosumnu’s 1-6 and Bones Hyland’s 3-10 shooting, the Wolves guards and wings not named Edwards combined to go 4-31 from the field.
Edwards finished with 34 points, but was the lone Wolf to score more than 14 points. The entire game, Minnesota struggled to score without their best player on the court as they lost the 12 non-garbage time minutes Ant was on the bench by 17 points.
The loss was reminiscent of two previous games for Minnesota, the 24-point loss to the Atlanta Hawks on New Year’s Eve and the 19-point drubbing at the hands of the Los Angeles Clippers right before the All-Star Break. The one thing all those games have in common is that they started at 3:00 PM ET or earlier.
“I hope not,” Julius Randle responded when asked if the early start time was an explanation for the team’s poor performance. “In the Playoffs, you can play at twelve or one O’clock so I hope that ain’t got nothing to do with it. If it does, we gotta figure it out fast.”
Edwards had a little bit of a different feeling about the early starts, “I think we got a trend of not being ready to play at two o’clock or on o’clock. I think we did good in Denver and then came out flat tonight.”
Finch was also asked about the poor performances in early start time games, and he immediately responded, “That’s a question for them.” He continued, “them. I mean, we prepare the same way as coaches. So we were good last week in Denver, so who knows? But yeah, we need to have more guys play well, and we gotta be ready to answer the bell no matter what, cuz we have a lot of different start times coming up.”
The one thing Finch is right about is that the Wolves have many different start times the rest of the season. They have multiple late-night games on their next road trip and two more early start times, one against the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder next Sunday, and another against the team with the best record in the Eastern Conference, the Detroit Pistons.
Today’s loss in and of itself can easily be forgotten. The Magic played well, especially Paolo Banchero and Desmond Bane, who combined for 55 points on 20-35 shooting, and the Wolves had won eight of their last nine games before the loss.
It is also a performance the Wolves will need to quickly forget as their margin of error in the Western Conference is thin. Letting this loss lead to two or three more will send them tumbling down the standings, while a one-off loss is manageable.
The Wolves’ best and worst quality is that they are a bit of a moody team. When vibes are good, they look unbeatable, and when things are going wrong, it feels like they’ll never win again. Whether or not today was a sign of things to come or just a somewhat bad game after a win streak will be something to watch for over the coming days.
Up Next
The Timberwolves head out on the road for a four-game West Coast road trip that begins Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Lakers. It’s another nationally televised game for the Wolves, as fans can watch the game on either NBC or Peacock. The game begins at 10:00 PM CT, testing the sleep patterns of those watching from Minnesota.
