With 8:25 left in the fourth quarter, Los Angeles Clippers rookie Yanic Niederhauser rose up in a crowd of three Minnesota Timberwolves. Off of a miss, the young big man grabbed the ball, dunked it with
authority, and picked up an and one in the process.
Stretching the lead to 24 for the Clippers at that point in the game, it was an indictment and moment to look in the mirror for a Wolves team that continued to write the same story it has all season. The problem is, the circumstances on this one weighed much heavier.
After an inexcusable loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night that showed all of the usual porous defensive efforts, Rudy Gobert had enough and went just short of nuclear in his postgame comments.
With new trade acquisition Ayo Dosunmu making his debut on Sunday, it was a ball on a tee for the Timberwolves to respond to a pointed callout against a Clipper team overwhelmed from a talent perspective on national TV.
Instead what followed was a bored and tired performance with a level of energy that often plagues this team.
Specifically from the Wolves’ top two options in Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle, who would be fair to assume was the majority of the target of Gobert’s postgame comments, a failure to set the tone on Sunday came from the top.
At the end of the first half, Edwards had eight points on 3-11 shooting, no rebounds, just one assist, and sandwiched an 0-5 start from three in as well. Randle added six first half points on 37% shooting, and rounded things off with two second half rebounds.
Behind both statlines were poor off-ball defense for most of the game, and a lot of reliance on drawing fouls for production.
“I feel like we had good energy today, but the offense just wasn’t going for us…especially for me,” Edwards said after the game.
Except it wasn’t. The energy wasn’t there. Perhaps postgame quotes were a little more tempered this time around with what Gobert said on Friday, but “good” would not be an adjective many would use to describe what came out on Sunday.
Instead, it was perhaps another case study of letting one side of the ball impact the other.
A place where the energy was indeed “good”? The opposite bench. Kawhi Leonard finished the game with 41 points and four steals. The rest of his team?
They followed suit.
Up Next
A familiar face in Nickeil Alexander-Walker is in town to face his former team head on with his current one in the Atlanta Hawks.
Atlanta has won two of their last three, with the loss coming to a red-hot Charlotte Hornets team.
Another performance with poor energy would be shocking and raise further alarms with this team. Alexander-Walker is particularly close with many members of this team, which is something that raises the compete level. Piling onto that is the last time the Wolves played the Hawks; a notorious 24 point blowout that temporarily woke the Wolves up for a few games and was a hard look in the mirror of how things were going at that time.
“In Atlanta we got our asses kicked,” Donte DiVincenzo said after the game, reflecting back and answering a question on how this team handles lulls in the season, with the New Year’s Eve game in A-Town being one of them.
It’s well known in the locker room, and the hope is that it can radiate in the wake of a bad matinee on Sunday.
Tipoff at Target Center is slated for 7:00 PM CST.
