Player Ratings: Game 53 | Sacramento Kings
Wolves see their win streak snapped in overtime heartbreaker.
Thriving in chaos has its peaks and it has its valleys. The Minnesota Timberwolves thrive in chaos. They embrace it, welcome it, delve headlong into its grasp. Lately, they have felt the benefits of that ethos. They have sent dangerous teams scuttling out of the gym with their tail between their legs thanks their ability to harness the chaos and spray it around in a devastating manner. But, there is a downside to chaos-thriving. It’s a volatile tsunami to wade in. Sometimes, it manifests itself in the wrong ways and on those nights this team feels a little too chaotic.
The game ends 118-111. It would have been a nice one to have. Man, it would have been a really nice one to have. The Sacramento Kings are a tough team to manhandle in two straight meetings and the Wolves remain a team whose chaos can overrule their stability. It wasn’t a bad loss, far from it. However, when you look at the freefall from fifth to ninth in the Western Conference standings, coming off the back of a game that slips away in overtime, it’s hard not to ponder how nice it would have been to have that win.
And Minnesota could have had it. With a bit less chaos and a little more maturity, they should have had it. They did a lot of things right, a lot of things to win a game against anybody in the league. All the way until the end they were battling and clawing to win what was arguably their most important game of the season so far. But big wins and important moments require cool heads and crisp execution, and while a game as back-and-forth as this one has a lot of minutia to parse through, this one feels pretty simple.
Knock down your free throws and avoid the avoidable turnovers.
Do both of those things and this one’s a cakewalk. Do one of them and the odds shift heavily in favor of the good guys. Do neither of them and you succumb to the whims of chaos and the battle axe of the Western Conference. The Wolves clanked 12 of their 25 free throws. Many of them in the late-game moments where calmness and coolness had to overcome chaos. Many of them feeling like hooked blades slicing through the heart of their momentum. And they committed 18 turnovers. Many of them unforced and costly on the other end. Many of them sloppy and riddled with indecisiveness.
Minnesota needs their chaos. They thrive in it. They don’t blitz the month of January or keep pace with a sizzling Sacramento team without it. But, they need to find their Zen. They need to find a way to parlay that chaos into tranquility when the game requires it.
D’Angelo Russell: 1/10
Eventually the egg was going to come. He’d been on a heater for a while now, but he was due to lay the egg. And, when Russell lays an egg, he really fucking lays one. He covers the hardwood in yolk and watches helplessly as his teammates faceplant on his droppings. He doesn’t really have a middle ground. He is complete gangbusters or complete garbage.
Unfortunately, the latter came in this one and it came at an awful time. From the first minute, it was clear his red-hot jump shot had flatlined. Bricks on jumpers, bricks on free throws, bricks on layups. Built a fucking temple of bricks and then prayed to an altar carved in his own likeness. And, as usual with him, when it rains it pours. He really lays eggs like few can. He was targeted pretty relentlessly as a defender by the Kings all night (especially in overtime) and finishes off the evening by freezing in place as Trey Lyles sneaks behind him and puts a bow on the evening.
A forgettable egg.
Finished with 10 points (28.9% TS), 4 rebounds and 7 assists in 40 minutes — -11.8 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 8/10
All we can do now is pick nits. There’s no glaring, inescapable, sweeping criticism that can be leveled against him. He’s fucking godly. Like Zeus if he could dunk. Like Thor if his hammer was a fucking basketball. Make no mistake, this version of Anthony Edwards is the second best player this franchise has ever seen. A scoring wunderkind, an energy injector, a beacon of heliocentric brilliance. The kind of player who teams pray for.
So, we pick nits. It’s all we can do. We acknowledge another hearty helping of magnificence — it’s truly just becoming the norm — and we focus on the areas that weren’t as finely tuned as they needed to be. In this one, it’s the turnovers and the missed free throws. In a game where those two areas sunk his team, Edwards was far too culpable. A half-dozen mishaps and a 25 percent clip (1-of-4) at the charity stripe are nits that needed to be picked.
Finished with 33 points (57.4% TS), 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks in 41 minutes — -11.8 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 8/10
A really tough game to rate. For most of the night, he was soundly beaten. Whether he was hampered by the undisclosed issue that forced him back to the locker room in the first quarter or he was just simply having an off night, he looked weary and transient. De’Aaron Fox isn’t a good matchup for him and he was fly-kicked in the dick defensively way more often than we are used to seeing by the speedy guard. On top of that, his offense was sputtery and best and invisible at worst.
Then he just steps up to the plate when the time came to thwack a fucking homer. He travels, he absolutely walks a fucking mile. His pivot foot changed a handful of times. But if any player deserves a break from those pesky zebras it’s McDaniels. And he still had to finish. He still had to step into a big-time trey and drain it. He even backs it up with a tough hoop-and-harm finish in overtime while the rest of his team collapsed into a heap.
The win didn’t come along with it, so his heroics will fade quicker than they should, but he came up with another big-balls play in this one and that’s important.
Finished with 11 points (59% TS), 3 rebounds and 4 assists in 33 minutes — -1.5 net rating.
Kyle Anderson: 6/10
Strange night. Strange player. Strange team. Strange fucking season. Not nearly at his best in this one — his robotic range was off on his jumper and he too was at fault for the late-game bungled switch with Russell — but he also did his thing for long stretches. His weird, wacky, wonderful and wild thing. Continued to link up with Gobert in big-to-big plays, converted a few of his funny little floaters around the rim, and was his usual ever-reliable self defensively.
This strange night kind of felt like one of his bad nights. But, his bad nights are usually still sprinkled with goodness.
Finished with 9 points (50.7% TS), 8 rebounds and 6 assists in 36 minutes — -2.6 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.