Déjà vu has never felt so brutal. Not just the déjà vu flooding the part of the brain that feels pain stemming from the only-sometimes-good Minnesota Timberwolves losing to the almost-always-bad Detroit Pistons, but the déjà vu of this Wolves team failing to meet the challenge. Failing to finally climb back up to a still underwhelming .500 record. Failing to bring the necessary urgency against a struggling team. Failing to take advantage of a Western Conference that is begging for a lower-middle team to take the leap into the thick of things.
The game ends 135-118. It was a rinse and repeat of Minnesota’s New Year’s Eve calamity. The same strong start, the same sleepwalking middle, the same faceplanting finish. For whatever reason, the Timberwolves can’t beat the Pistons. They can’t even get close.
This one was just a cacophony of disasters. It started when Kyle Anderson was ruled out, it worsened when Anthony Edwards reaggravated his hip injury, it snowballed when Detroit found themselves wide-open and in-rhythm on every jumper and every rim-attack, and it ended only when the final whistle blew and the guillotine was long past Minnesota’s decapitated cranium. Whatever could go wrong did go wrong. Throw a blanket on the whole night and label it a shitshow. The offense was prosaic, the defense was porous, the energy was ghostly, and the result was deserved.
D’Angelo Russell: 5/10
Kind of personified his team’s night. Good early. Really really good to begin the second quarter. Then faded into the coldest depths of the abyss. Like a puff of fucking dust. His shooting numbers never fell of a cliff, but he just stopped getting to his spots and stopped being impactful. With Edwards’ minutes fluctuating, the Pistons clearly game-planned him and he ended up flitting around ineffectively, popping up only to turn the ball over or get steamed on defense.
Finished with 8 points (30.8% TS), 6 rebounds and 8 assists in 38 minutes — -6.8 net rating.
Austin Rivers: 3/10
He can be a bit of an anomaly. There’s no doubt this team needs his point-of-attack defense and his corner-pocket shooting, but they don’t need anything else. They don’t need any of his weird fucking jab steps and they certainly could do without his unruly and unplanned drives. When those offensive adventures become more frequent than his low-usage skills, as they did in this one, he becomes a really tough watch.
Finished with 21 points (75.6% TS), 4 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals in 36 minutes — -4.2 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 6/10
Probably one of the weirdest fucking nights ever. Why did they rule him out if he was still a chance to come back? Why did he come back? Why in the fucking world did Chris Finch leave him out there to toil with the third-stringers when the game was beyond settled? There are a lot of questions and all of the answers seem to be the wrong ones.
Even then, even with all of the weirdness lingering in the air like acrid smoke, he is the only player to cross the 20-point threshold. His 15-point last quarter was a testament to his ability to continue pressing despite his teammates giving up — even if it wasn’t with his usual smoothness. At some point, he will need to rest his bothersome hip, but the organization doesn’t seem to want that and the team can scarcely survive without him.
Finished with 23 points (52.6% TS), 4 rebounds and 5 assists in 38 minutes — -0.9 net rating.
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