Groundhog Day. Deja Vu. Over and over again. It keeps feeling like the Minnesota Timberwolves will eventually escape the cold grasp of their demons and beat a team that is relatively easily beaten. It feels inevitable that they might just stumble into a victory against a team vying less for wins and more for draft lottery ping pong balls. At some point, the penny had to drop, the playoff race had to become a real thing that is worth taking seriously. And yet, the Wolves keep fluffing their lines. They keep shooting their foot clean off.
The game ends 121-113. A week off wasn’t the elixir. It seems nothing can stop this team from faceplanting every time they’re expected to run. They entered the break off the back of a meltdown against the Washington Wizards and from the first minute of this one it felt like the angst was weighing them and suffocating them.
Same shit, different team. They couldn’t stop their turnovers annihilating any run they attempted to form. They couldn’t defend the paint. They couldn’t stop fouling. They couldn’t wrangle their nerves and put away a team who were begging to be put away. Just like the Wizards games. And the Rockets games. And the Spurs games. And the Detroit games. The season’s story has gained another ghoulish chapter, and it feels like it’s drying in an inescapable ink.
Mike Conley: 5/10
Was far from the biggest sledgehammer knocking the life out of the team, but his impact has remained the same level of unremarkable as it has been since he arrived. Clearly knows how to play with Gobert and he clearly tries harder than his predecessor defensively, he is certainly metronomically reliable. But his reliability has its downfalls. Unlike Russell, whose flavor could vacillate between outlandishly delectable to unfathomably putrid, Conley is vanilla.
When the rest of the team is bordering on rotten, vanilla doesn’t necessarily move the needle.
Finished with 15 points (55.8% TS), 2 rebounds and 3 assists in 31 minutes — -8.8 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 5/10
All of a sudden, he’s holding up the entire weight of this team. And it’s fucking heavy. It seems to be snapping vertebrae and popping kneecaps. Without him doing all of that heavy lifting, they get run out of the building every single night. But right now it feels like he is being ground to a youthful powder. That doesn’t excuse the sloppy defensive closeouts, the absurd bouts of shot selection fuckery, and the wasteful turnovers. That’s on him to figure out as the budding superstar. But it feels like he has no exit route on this highway to hell, it’s just the peaks and pits of a one-man band.
Finished with 29 points (52.2% TS), 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks in 40 minutes — -2.1 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 5/10
Just like the Wizards game, it felt like his role was reversed. It was another night where you could see the bones of a higher volume scorer. He’s still remarkably smooth as a driver, pull-up shooter and corner gunner. But, conversely, he was once again held over the fire defensively. Scorched and fucking sizzled. LaMelo Ball had his way with him, beating him off the dribble relentlessly and forcing Minnesota’s defense into a slow and lazy rotation.
Unless he finds his panache defensively again — which should be expected — this ship is heading full-speed into the biggest iceberg imaginable.
Finished with 11 points (68.9% TS), 5 rebounds and 2 assists in 30 minutes — -6.0 net rating.
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