The San Antonio Spurs landed in Minneapolis at 3 a.m. on Sunday, and yet for three quarters of basketball, they looked like the more energetic team. Both the Spurs and the Minnesota Timberwolves were on the second
game of a back-to-back, and fighting for position in the Western Conference standings. The Wolves looked to be dead in the water, down 19 points in the middle of the third quarter, until they flipped a switch to come all the way back to defeat the Spurs 104-103.
The Timberwolves’ physicality overwhelmed the Spurs in the fourth quarter, outscoring them 33-18 in the final frame. Until that point, the Spurs’ defense had completely disrupted Minnesota, and they got just enough offense, thanks to a big night from Victor Wembanyama, to build a lead. Once the Wolves started hitting threes and forcing turnovers, the game quickly got away from San Antonio.
“They (Minnesota) have a knack for turning it on when they get down a little bit or when it gets to be crunch time,” Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson said. “They are a tough out, and I thought they got the better of us in the fourth quarter.”
San Antonio looked like two different teams on Sunday night: one that was nearly impossible to score on with Wembanyama on the floor, and one that was flustered without him. The Spurs started the game on a 16-0 run with Wembanyama returning to the starting lineup. When he went to the bench, the Wolves responded with a 9-2 run. Wemby was a +17 in his 27 minutes, while his backup, Luke Kornet, was -21 in his 23 minutes.
Wembanyama was everywhere defensively, forcing the Wolves to pass the ball away or throw up bad shots around the rim. He didn’t register a block, but he had 3 steals and altered plenty of looks around the rim. Offensively, he looked confident against fellow Frenchman Rudy Gobert. Wembanyama led the Spurs in scoring with 29 points, 10 of them coming on perfect shooting from the free-throw line.
Wembanyama was dominant until the fourth quarter, when Julius Randle became his primary defender. Randle got into Wemby’s chest and didn’t relent for the whole quarter, making everything extremely hard for the Spurs’ big man. While Wemby wasn’t scoring, the Wolves were surging back with three-point shooting and scoring off turnovers. Minnesota knocked down four three-pointers compared to the Spurs’ one in the fourth, and forced San Antonio to cough the ball up 7 times in the final frame.
San Antonio relied on Wembanyama’s scoring while their guard trio of De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle, and Dylan Harper struggled. The trio was a combined 8-35 from the field against the Wolves. If it weren’t for Fox’s clutch scoring in the fourth quarter, it could have been much worse. The Spurs’ young guards, Castle and Harper, have struggled to find a rhythm in January – Sunday night’s game felt like the low point.
“Part of it is they are missing some good shots, and part of it, specifically for the younger two guys, is they need to learn their balance of what this game calls upon when you have the basketball in your hands a lot,” Johnson said. “Whether that is being aggressive, whether that is understanding time and score, whether that is on time and on target passes to your teammates, whether that is getting the ball out of your hands early to let your teammates touch it and find energy throughout the possession for everybody else. There is stuff that they have to go through. It’s not different than when they were flying high, and the box scores were full. That’s part of the deal when you are 19 and 21 in this league.”
Despite ceding a 14-point fourth-quarter lead, the Spurs had a chance to win the game with 16.8 seconds to go on the clock. After an Anthony Edwards (who had a team-high 23 points) floater put the Wolves up 1, Johnson called a timeout to draw up a play. The Spurs attempted to switch Randle off Wembanyama for a high-post isolation play, but Randle fought through the screen and got into Wembanyama’s chest, forcing a contested fadeaway that missed. After Julian Champagnie secured the offensive rebound, he kicked the ball back to Fox, who was wide open at the top of the key. His three-pointer was long as the clock expired.
The loss is the Spurs’ fifth-straight to the Timberwolves. It puts Minnesota a game and a half behind the Spurs for the second seed in the Western Conference. San Antonio falls to 27-12 with the loss. Up next, they’ll travel to Oklahoma City with a matchup against the Thunder on Tuesday. The Spurs are 3-0 against the league-best Thunder.
