With a deafening whoosh and a barrage of jump shots, the Wolves feel all the way back at square one. Perhaps that isn’t the case and perhaps they can wipe this abomination from their minds and get back to the better brand of basketball they’ve largely displayed over the past few weeks, but this feels like square one. As is the case with every wall-to-wall waxing, this one feels like it only made their ever-steepening Western Conference mountain even harder to scale.
The game ends 133-112. Brutality disguised in the form of a sporting event. An all-night guillotine dismembering whatever shred of confidence was left from their impressive win against Utah a few nights back.
Whatever could go wrong, went wrong. There’s no escaping the fact that Damian Lillard turned into the Human fucking Torch without a bead of sweat ever forming on his brow, but there were more issues than one lone flamethrower.
Minnesota waltzed in with a sluggish start that was only compounded by a one-sided whistle-happy officiating crew. But that was only the tip of the iceberg that this team willfully barreled into. Their lack of defensive purpose spread out from their coverage on Lillard like a thriving cancer, extending to their rim-protection, their off-ball attentiveness, and their transition defense. Their own offense wasn’t an enormous issue, but as the night wore on it’s efficacy was relentlessly beaten down by their inability to get stops.
That laissez-faire attitude defensively ultimately culminated in their third-quarter meltdown. While Chris Finch watched on, befuddlingly content not to call timeout, Minnesota gave up a 16-to-4 run within three minutes of game time to end the period. An implosion that turned the rest of the evening into a nonchalant walk on the beach for the Blazers.
Square one has never felt so disheartening.
D’Angelo Russell: 7/10
Probably the best of a bad bunch. Outside of a flurry of fourth-quarter hoist-and-hopes, he was efficient again as a mid-range master and made a smattering of nice lob passes and corner kicks. He’s kind of in that zone where you expect everything he does with the ball in his hands to come off and, for the most part, it did.
Had a big stinking stinker on defense, though. He wasn’t alone. He was naught but a needle in a big steaming haystack of shit. He was far too lackadaisical on the occasions where he was matched up with Lillard — failing consistently to move his feet quick enough or chase back to stop transition triples bursting the net — and his off-ball rotations were puzzling at best and completely non-existent at worst.
One of those nights where the contradictions of his game were plain for all to see.
Finished with 23 points (56.6% TS), 3 rebounds and 8 assists in 30 minutes — -18.3 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 3/10
He has these nights. These nights where the rim isn’t his friend, where the budding playmaking takes a leave of absence, where the off-ball ballistics are dormant defensively. On those nights, the Wolves lose. With a whistle like any other player of his caliber, he would have another half-dozen free throws (at least) to fatten up his box score. He was bricking the absolute fuck out the ones he did manage to pry from the referee’s cold, dead hands anyway. Just a dirty night. A stinky, grimy, filthy night.
Finished with 17 points (45.6% TS), 2 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals in 33 minutes — -34.2 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 1/10
Lit up like a fucking bonfire. He wasn’t at his best as an on-ball menace — he hasn’t been since he came back from his illness — but he also fell victim to a shooting phenom who was percolating in a very rare way. When he was caught slacking, he was punished. When he was in Lillard’s face, he was punished. Aside from the one possession where he was able to swat Lillard’s jumper, he was punished routinely and seemingly with ease.
That seemed to leak into the rest of his game. Tentacles of shakiness slithering into every crevice of his night. It’s hard to keep carving your own impact when you’re getting flayed every single possession down the other end. Like fully fucking flayed. Skinless and rudderless. McDaniels took just four shots, converted one of them, made no impact as a rebounder (again) and didn’t find any of the playmaking touch that we’ve seen grow a smidge this season.
Finished with 2 points (25% TS) in 28 minutes — -23.8 net rating.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Howls and Growls to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.