Two steps forward, one step back. That’s been the story of the season for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
On a beautiful Friday night in downtown Minneapolis, the Timberwolves took on the Portland Trail Blazers, looking to go for the 3-0 sweep of the homestand. The Wolves were again without both Anthony Edwards and Naz Reid, making the game against a Portland squad still trying to win games far from a gimmie.
Without Edwards, the Wolves’ offense struggled to find consistent offense in the first half as
they shot 20/48 (41.7 percent) from the field. With Mike Conley no longer in the rotation, the Timberwolves do not have a lack of ball handling in their rotation, which only gets worse with Edwards unable to play.
“We don’t have a primary handler right now,” Chris Finch said pregame. “We’re really defusing that through pace and just early movement, and it tends to feed itself. We’ve seen that all season long. The faster we play, the quicker we make decisions, the more the ball moves.”
Following an 0-7 stretch from beyond the arc to start the third quarter, the Wolves found themselves down by 18 points late in the second quarter. With the game potentially teetering out of control, Minnesota was finally able to remove the lid off the basket.
Minnesota made three straight 3-pointers, including two from Bones Hyland and one from Ayo Dosunmu, to close the half on an 11-2 run, cutting the Portland lead in half going into the break.
The offensive success continued into the third quarters as the Wolves made 15 of their first 20 shots in the quarter as they Wolves played with a near-perfect combination of pace and ball movement to take an 83-81 lead, their first lead since they were up 12-11.
Minnesota’s defense was a large reason for the turnaround as well. Despite giving up 68 points in the first half, they completely shut down Portland third-quarter offense, limiting them to 7-20 (35 percent) from the field while forcing six turnovers.
As we’ve seen too many times this season though, the Wolves were not able to sustain that level of play the rest of the game. This time it was the offensive side of the ball that fell apart late in the game. As the game slowed down over the final 15 minutes of the game, the Wolves’ offense made just six of their final 28 shot attempts including nine straight misses immediately following taking their largest lead of three points.
Despite the poor offensive stretch, the Wolves were able to keep the game close and took the lead back with less than a minute left as Randle used his pattened bully-ball moves to get into the lane and hit a jumper to put Minnesota up by one.
On the subsequent defensive possession, the Wolves defense forced a pair of missed shots from Jerami Grant and Deni Avdija, but each time the Blazers were able to grab the offensive rebound. After a Portland timeout, Grant got free when Randle got caught up on a screen and draine the dagger 3-pointer.
The pair of offensive rebounds gave Portland 18 total for the game. That number of extra shots was too many to overcome as the Wolves fell to the Blazers 108-104. The Wolves now sit at sixth in the Western Conference following wins from the Houston Rockets and Denver Nuggets.
Randle led the Wolves in scoring with an inneficent 19 points on 6-16 shooting from the field. Dosumnu was sensational the entire game, coming up just two assists shy of a triple-double with 17 points, 10 rebounds, and eight assists. Rudy Gobert was again great on both ends of the floor, grealy limiting the Trail Blazers’ offense while putting up 18 points and 15 rebounds.
The loss by itself isn’t a terrible one. Being without both Edwards and Reid made offense tough to come by and the Trail Blazers are team still trying to win basketball games, which at this point in the season makes a big different. In the context of the season at large though, it’s a tough pill to swallow.
The Wolves have been one of the most healthy teams in the entire NBA this season. While they were missing Edwards and Reid tonight, there have been plenty of games earlier in the season where the Wolves’ opponent was missing significan firepower and they were unable to capitalize with a win.
Every team goes through injuries, and those injuries play a big role in the result of games, but in a long NBA season how a team deals with those night-to-night injuries shows a lot about who that team is at full strength. In this one, the Wolves came out flat defensively, by the admission of their starting center, and were not able to make enough shots to get this game across the finish line.
This Wolves team has an incredibly high ceiling. They can beat anyone on any given night, but have not been able to consistently play high-level basketball. Their longest win streak this season is just five games, a fairly small number for a team with championship aspirations.
With now just 11 games left in the season, the inconsistency is just who these Timberwolves are.
This story will be updated throughout the night after coach and player media availabilities.
Up Next
The Timberwolves now head out east for a matchup with the Boston Celtics, who recently added Jayson Tatum back into the lineup following his Achilles injury during last season’s playoffs. The game tips off at 7:00 PM CT this Sunday, airing nationally on NBC and Peacock.
