Player Ratings: Game 43 | Charlotte Hornets
Wolves drop an embarrassing one.
It’s funny how quickly the highest highs can turn to the lowest lows. One minute, the top of the mountain is a playground and the next the bottom of the abyss is an unescapable hole. The Minnesota Timberwolves have taken pleasure in toggling between the summit and the abyss for as long as we all care to remember, and they just served us up another devastating mixture of the pair.
The game ends 128-125. Calling it a roller coaster is generous to roller coasters. This game had just about everything a game could possibly have. Nothing boring. The Wolves need some boring again. Maturity is boring and they need it back. They need some mundane efficiency. Just regular old boringness. Teams like the Charlotte Hornets beat teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves all the time, but they don’t do it like this.
In the annals of history, this night will go down as the night Karl-Anthony Towns scored 62 points, breaking his own franchise record and doing it in jaw-dropping style. The present will decipher it differently. The present will see it as another fourth-quarter choke job, another bout of woeful player execution and coaching malpractice, and another chunk taken out of their legitimacy.
A night to remember turned to a night to forget. It’s funny how quick that can happen.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker: 8/10
One of the few who actually seemed to give a fuck that there was a game going on. While he was happy to feed the best, he also refused to sit idly by and watch the Karl-Anthony Towns showcase like the rest of his team. Minnesota could have used more of that.
He tried. He hustled defensively to plug the holes that his teammates continually poked open. He made shots and actively looked for his shot instead of blindly feeding Towns. He isn’t a natural point guard and that’s blatantly obvious, but he does have some playmaking chops that cover up some of his lack of table-setting ability and he exhibited it again in this one.
He’s not Mike Conley, though, and nor should we expect him to be even on the nights where we all crave our grizzled role-playing mastermind. Alexander-Walker is what he is and he proved that, even on a night where his team is hellbent on being the stupidest fuckers alive, he’s still going to be the same Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
Finished with 18 points (84.5% TS) and 2 assists in 30 minutes — -6.1 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 4/10
He certainly didn’t have the strangest night among them all, but it was a strange night nonetheless.
He enters the game under a cloud of illness and he looked ill — especially on the defensive end. He missed dozens of rotations throughout the night and the rest of his teammates didn’t have the hellhound mentality they usually have to douse those fires. He just looked slow. Lethargic to the point of wondering why the fuck he was playing in the first place.
He was able to consistently make really encouraging passing reads and that helped him contribute without any of his usual burst and energy as a scorer, but more than anybody it was him who fell into the trap of feeding Towns too overtly and abandoning smart offense in favor of chasing history.
Sick or not, he suited up and that means he needed to be better. This team is slipping back into the immaturity crater that they wallowed in all of last season and, as the leader, he’s naturally at the forefront of it.
Finished with 9 points (37.9% TS), 5 rebounds and 11 assists in 37 minutes — +9.0 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 4/10
Got roasted defensively.
It feels necessary to point that out because he’s such a freakish defender that it feels like a cold hand across the face whenever someone holds him over the fire on that end of the floor. In this one, it wasn’t just LaMelo Ball and his herky-jerky mastery, it was every bastard in teal. Whether it was getting through screens, communicating on switches, rotating as a helper, or just fucking anything, he was a shell of his usual demonic self.
He did rock the ‘fro and that was very fucking cool. He did make some shots (and missed too many that he should have made) and he did rebound and playmake more than we’re accustomed to seeing. Still, this game was lost on defense and he’s one of the defenders that matter most.
Finished with 9 points (45.5% TS), 5 rebounds and 4 assists in 35 minutes — -11.0 net rating.
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