Player Ratings: Game 61 | Washington Wizards
Wolves embarrass themselves heading into the break.
Keep banging your head against the wall and eventually the skull will crack. The Minnesota Timberwolves have waltzed into every game they should win this season and, most times, they’ve left with their own claret gushing out of that cracked skull. The definition of insanity, they say. Well this team feels insane. They feel hapless on nights where they should be formidable and formidable on the nights they should feel hapless. This was but another chapter in that novel of insanity. Another gash in their fractured skull.
The game ends 114-106. A choke. An embarrassment. An entirely predictable faceplant as they sprinted willingly into the banana peel. A night where a sizzling start quickly turned into a crumbling cacophony of errors. They limp into the All-Star break instead of skipping into it, and they have naught but themselves to blame. Again.
And it did start well. It started magnificently. But none of that matters anymore, the 20-point lead in the first quarter is but a fond memory locked inside a fever dream. The mountain of double-digit leads that followed it through the next three quarters all trapped inside a similar time capsule from another realm — a realm where this team can build on and even maintain that rage against teams ripe for the beating.
Instead, we’re left with the final 10 minutes of game time rattling around our memories. The poor execution from each and every player. The even worse coaching performance from Chris Finch, who seemed determined to go down with his ship. The consistent Bradley Beal onslaught. The bench unit who didn’t give an inch of help all night. And, most of all, the final moments fleeting by as another winnable game drifted away into nothingness.
They’ll have over a week to chew on this, and it’s unlikely it’ll ever taste any better than it does right now.
Mike Conley: 4/10
Even as a player who has tapered off in the last few years as a scorer, this was an uncharacteristic night. A home debut to punt into another dimension. There is something to say about his passing — he should have had another fistful of assists if his teammates could finish their dinner around the rim — and the refreshing defensive acumen at the point guard position, but there is even more to say about not troubling the scorers.
Zero points won’t cut it. He doesn’t have to have D’Angelo Russell’s level of scoring explosiveness, but he can’t have fucking zero. A couple of open looks from deep that he’d normally make, a couple of finishes at the rim he’d normally feather in. All of them clanked. All of them another blade slicing through the Wolves’ chances. The break will be good for him.
Finished with 2 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 steals in 33 minutes — -2.6 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 7/10
Exemplified the night. A fucking bull in the first quarter, tearing his horns into every perimeter defender and stamping his hooves on every would-be rim-protector. He had bouts of brilliance after that, too, with his rim-attacks pretty much unstoppable as long as he wanted them. But the sloppiness and casualness got the better of him as the night wore on. As it did with everybody.
Half a dozen turnovers, all of them stinging a little more than the last. Too many bad shots after his hot start, with his late-game selection feeling more like prodding at Washington’s porous defense rather than forcing his way through it as he did earlier.
In the end, he finishes with a pile of points and a pile of hurtful plays accompanying them. That’s the level he’s operating on right now. 34 big ones doesn’t get the job done when he’s playing without much scoring help. He needs to control the night, and this game felt poorly controlled.
Finished with 34 points (55.9% TS), 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 steals in 37 minutes — -6.0 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 6/10
Another night of diverging tales. He made 40 percent of Minnesota’s total 3-point makes, which is as encouraging as it is fucking depressing, and whenever he is scrapping for rebounds the team is better for it. There’s clearly untapped potential there offensively and you can see him configuring it in real time now that he has more offensive tether.
But, man, did he get absolutely pummeled defensively. It’s not a sentence often uttered, but it was a defining feature of this game.
He’s handled the league’s best scorers. He’s a demogorgon defensively almost every time his kicks touch the hardwood. The Wolves would be a big block of swiss cheese if he wasn’t consistently suiting up and consistently strangling scorers. But this was a bad night. Bradley Beal gave him the fucking blues. McDaniels couldn’t get through screens like he usually does, he couldn’t stay in front of Beal’s smooth drives in isolation battles, and he ended up watching from behind as Washington’s gunner scorched him over and over again.
Finished with 15 points (68.9% TS) and 8 rebounds in 33 minutes — +6.2 net rating.
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