The NBA is a treacherous beast. When it gives a team a chance, they better take that chance. They better grab it and run with it and cherish that chance. The Wolves had their chance with an early-season schedule boost, but it’s gone. Faded like a wisp of smoke in the air. And now they have to face that beast. They have to fend off the gnashing fangs and sidestep the slicing talons. The Phoenix Suns were their first test, and that proved to be as difficult as it sounds.
The game ends 116-107. There just isn’t any room for error against a well-oiled machine like the Suns. Sure, they had a tumultuous off-season — and the Wolves had a brilliant one — but this is the real stuff. And, unlike the monotonously meshing Wolves, they know how to dominate the real stuff.
We could decipher every fiber of the evening, but the same themes that have pulsated through the entire season pulsated strongly through this one. Minnesota played stingy enough defense to bother the flamethrower Suns, but they couldn’t shake their shot selection issues, their isolation-heavy tendencies, or the fact that the starting unit as a whole just can’t seem to find wavelengths within a dozen leagues of each other. At the moment, it’s rinse and repeat.
D’Angelo Russell: 1/10
Sometimes it rains and sometimes it pours acid rain all over your skull until it melts into a lifeless pile of goo. He remains a flaming frustration and this game was his coup de grâce. The heaviest swing of the guillotine yet.
There isn’t a part of his night you couldn’t point at and shudder. His offensive game is a mess, filled with clanked finishes coming off ill-advised attempts. His playmaking is head-scratching at best and head-caving in with a fucking axe at worst. Unfortunately, there might not even be words for his defensive performance. One of the worst imaginable. Some of it laziness, some of it athletic deficiencies, some of it would need a team of scientists to discover the root cause.
Something’s gotta give.
Finished with 5 points (31.4% TS), 4 rebounds and 4 assists in 23 minutes — -40.8 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 6/10
When he doesn’t pound the air out of the ball, he is excellent. Fuck, sometimes he is excellent even when he does. He can still score like a lab-created machine and his defensive effort was a huge step up, even against a Suns team who bombarded him with screens.
However, even for all of his isolation brilliance and his ability to prop the team up on his back like a more jacked-up version of Atlas, he isn’t part of the ball-movement solution when his game style becomes too much he and not enough we. He is tiptoeing a very tricky tightrope, but at the moment he might be ending up on his ass a smidge too often.
Finished with 24 points (51.7% TS), 6 rebounds and 3 steals in 40 minutes — -14.8 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 2/10
Needs to find a middle ground. When it isn’t a hurricane of defensive excellence and loping scoring efforts, it can’t be this. It can’t be fouls and missed triples and invisibility. There needs to be a middle ground. The peak is enough to make your hairs stand up on the back of your neck and throw a fucking rave, but the valley is far too deep, dark and perilous.
Finished with 5 points (40% TS) and 3 rebounds in 35 minutes — -48.6 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 8/10
It’s likely the defensive blips are going to continue. At least for now. He can look goofy on occasion and he simply doesn’t have the mobility or experience to navigate the type of off-ball screening Phoenix can hurl his way. However, he seems all the way back on the other side of the ball. Carry the offense on his own kind of back. Let it revolve around him like a blazing sun kind of back.
His shot wasn’t falling early, but he stuck with it and ended the night with an efficient stat line. He is just very good at doing things with the ball in his hands. Always a threat off the bounce, always silky around the rim, always the best shooting big man in the known universe. The passing is new, though, the passing is new and frilly and just so damn impactful, man. He is this team’s best playmaker and best scorer — for better or worse.
Finished with 24 points (62.1% TS), 10 rebounds and 7 assists in 37 minutes — -13.1 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 3/10
He was juiceless. Couldn’t exert his defensive radiance, couldn’t catch anything, didn’t find any pick-and-roll or putback rhythm. Just a big juiceless French fuck.
Finished with 7 points (85.8% TS), 9 rebounds and 3 assists in 32 minutes — -19.8 net rating.
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