The worst part is that it isn’t surprising. Nights like this and results like this should be surprising for any team deigning to take itself seriously as a contender or even one who can rattle a few cages in the postseason. For this Minnesota Timberwolves team, however, there was nothing surprising here. This is an old spaghetti western rerun that we’ve watched and hated a thousand times. Pistols at dawn and it’s Minnesota shooting itself in the foot.
The game ends 129-123. Nothing was surprising. It wasn’t surprising that they had the talent and the gameplan and the scintillating execution to pummel the middling Chicago Bulls for two quarters. It wasn’t surprising because we’ve seen how exciting this team can be. It wasn’t surprising that they reentered proceedings like a zombified horde coming out of halftime. It wasn’t surprising that their 23-point lead was whittled down within minutes. It wasn’t surprising that they clung to a single-digit lead heading into the fourth quarter and it certainly wasn’t surprising when they pissed that away as well.
This isn’t the same team that rocked our world and filled our heads with honey-sweet dreams before the new year. That was a long-past fever dream. Since the calendar flipped, the Timberwolves are volatile and vampiric; just as capable of a sumptuous stretch as they are of digging their fangs into their own neck and sucking the fun out of the season.
To give credit where credit is absolutely due, the Bulls were magnificent after halftime. Led by the scorching-hot stylings of Coby White — with DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic flanking him — they buried Minnesota under an avalanche of tough looks. With their adjusted defense — imagine a coach actually adjusting to something! — clamping the things that went right for the Wolves in the first half, they were able to whip their home crowd into a frenzy and pull off the smash-and-grab win.
In that sense, this wasn’t the same kind of collapse that has seen Minnesota hand wins on silver platters to teams throughout the last (sigh) three seasons. That doesn’t matter anymore, though. What matters is that this isn’t surprising. What matters is this doesn’t seem curable. What matters is this is a legitimate hole in their armor and every team in the league is gleefully thrusting their sword through it.
Mike Conley: 2/10
Calling him a problem would definitely be something you could throw in the overreaction bin, but it does feel like he’s no longer the solution, either. At least not right now.
That doesn’t mean he isn’t valuable. Of course he is. It doesn’t mean all of the wonderful things — tangibly and intangibly — he brings to this team aren’t huge boons. Of course they are. They’re real and the Wolves will continue to need them. But the things that are going wrong can’t be knitted back together by his wizened hands.
When they needed someone to inject some energy into the fizzling late-game defense he was nowhere to be seen and that’s been a constant for a while now. More concerningly, they need someone who can create their own shot and collapse a defense enough to make Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns viable off-ball options in big moments. At this stage of his career, he’s not that either.
So, sometimes there are going to be nights that lend themselves to all of the things he does do, but other times there are nights where he kind of fades into obscurity. There’s been a lot of the latter for a while now.
Finished with 9 points (64.3% TS) and 8 assists and in 36 minutes — -16.6 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 8/10
I don’t know anymore, man. You could tell me he was middling or you could tell me he was otherworldly or you could tell me a billion things that reside somewhere between those two extremes and you’d have a solid argument on every one of them.
The facts are the facts. He was downright ridiculous in the first half. As if someone just fell into a vat of radioactive waste and spent some time testing out the range of their newfangled superpowers. He smashed through Chicago’s defense to finish at the rim or get to the line or whip passes to his teammates. And when he couldn’t puncture their porous defense he just cashed jumpers like they were going out of fashion.
For any other team, he did enough to snatch the game away. But he plays for the Minnesota Timberwolves and they’re the dumbest team on the fucking planet.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s on that team. He’s often the tip of that puzzling spear. He still continues to push and prod, but the second-half defense is trapping and harassing him to within an inch of his life and he’s forced to get off the ball more often than not. He still manages to score more than any of his counterparts while things were going awfully awry and he actually gets off the ball enough to get some open looks for his teammates. But the facts are the facts.
He is still ineffectual when games tighten up and he’s still prone to turnovers and isolation escapades. Contrary to the seemingly popular opinion, he was much better at playing off-ball in this game, but he still had a handful of late-clock bricks and two painful turnovers in the fourth quarter/overtime period.
The facts are the facts. He’s too young and too spasmodic to win the Wolves enough games to be contenders. That’ll probably change, but the facts are the facts.
Finished with 38 points (56.9% TS), 12 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and 5 turnovers in 44 minutes — -1.9 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 2/10
The emotional part of me is just sick of him. Unemotionally, I know he’s a fantastic defender. I love him for it. I fully believe in his potential to be more than that and I know that development has never ever been strictly linear. Above all, I know that even if he stays what he is right now for the rest of his career he’s going to be extremely valuable until the day he hangs up his kicks.
But the emotional part of me — the far less rational part — is just sick of watching him do dumb shit. There’s so much dumb shit going on throughout every Wolves game that it’d just be nice to take a break from dumb shit. Unfortunately, McDaniels is often at the forefront of the dumb shit.
He didn’t commit any backbreaking last-second fouls in this one, but he threw away his efficient and effective first half by telegraphing a handful of dumb shit passes, missing open looks, and struggling to stamp his usual defensive imprint onto the game as White and DeRozan massacred the Timberwolves’ defense.
He has a lot of long-term silver linings, but he’s a dark cloud in big moments right now.
Finished with 13 points (59.1% TS), 3 assists and 4 turnovers in 40 minutes — +4.5 net rating.
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