Just a bit of backbone would be nice. At present, the fact that this newfangled version of the Minnesota Timberwolves needs time to gel is rooted into the expectations held by their fan base. Sloppiness is acceptable, clunkiness too. But a bit of backbone would be nice. A bit of fight. Some energy or effort or willingness to accelerate that bonding process. Not that. Not a game where it seemed the players couldn’t give two squirts of piss that they were being run out of their own yard.
The game ends 115-106. Don’t let a late-game comeback that really tightened that scoreline up sully what this was. This was a wall-to-wall walloping. A back-alley beatdown. A gouge that either builds scar tissue or turns gangrenous.
And there wasn’t too much to parse. The Spurs ran and ran and ran, while the Wolves walked and plodded. The Spurs whipped the ball around like it was steaming hot, while the Wolves pounded the air right out of it. The Spurs made hay at the rim, hay in the mid-range, and hay beyond the 3-point line, while the Wolves made manure from all three levels. The Spurs defended with vigor and verve, while the Wolves barely broke a sweat.
Whether it was tiredness on the second night of a road-home back-to-back, a complete misfiring that every team has throughout a long season, a warning sign of potential disaster — maybe even some muddled combination of it all — whatever the fuck that was needs to be extinguished. Quick.
D’Angelo Russell: 5/10
Decided to show up in the fourth quarter. Almost strapped the team to his back at one stage and carried them to an undeserved promised land. He didn’t show up before that. It’s not about the occasional mid-range jumper or well-placed helper, it’s about the complete lack of give-a-fuck when defending ball screen actions.
San Antonio knew he wouldn’t try to get through them, and they targeted him over and over and over again. Instead of, you know, helping out his stranded big men by fighting to stay on his man’s hip, he just watched ball-handlers sail by like he was watching a fucking yacht race. No amount of scoring prowess will stop that from being a problem.
Finished with 25 points (67.1% TS), 5 rebounds, 7 assists and 2 steals in 31 minutes — -13.5 net rating.
Anthony Edwards: 2/10
Much the same as Russell, but without the scoring jabs. Got roasted like a fucking chook in transition defense all night long, meagerly fought his own battle with ball screens, and never even sniffed the kind of domination with the ball that we’ve seen over the previous two games. Yuck.
Finished with 9 points (27.9% TS), 10 rebounds and 2 assists in 35 minutes — -14.0 net rating.
Jaden McDaniels: 2/10
Didn’t really show up. Can you sense a theme here? The Wolves were as reliable as a fart on an Indian vacation. Usually, you can at least bank on McDaniels’ shadow demon defense to make an appearance, but even that was missing in this one.
Finished with 4 points (41% TS) and 3 rebounds in 24 minutes — -19.2 net rating.
Karl-Anthony Towns: 6/10
Like Russell, he at least came to play offensively. Unlike Russell, he maintained that type of well-balanced rage for most of the evening. And, like every fucking player who touched that cursed hardwood, he was abysmal defensively. Sure, at times he was given no help in pick-and-roll coverage by his guards and wings, but he was caught ball-watching or fecklessly harassing air or just straight-up jogging back aimlessly far too often. A story as old as time itself.
Finished with 27 points (67.2% TS), 11 rebounds and 5 assists in 39 minutes — -2.3 net rating.
Rudy Gobert: 4/10
Whenever he wasn’t completely hung out to crackle and burn by his point-of-attack comrades, he was able to stifle shots at the rim and do his usual I’m-really-fucking-tall thing. Most of the time that wasn’t the case, though. And he compleminted those cringe-inducing plays by refusing to sprint back on defense and continuing to look lost and meddlesome in the offense. At some point, that has to change, or conversations that we don’t want to have are going to start bubbling.
Finished with 11 points (95.5% TS), 7 rebounds and 3 blocks in 32 minutes — -10.3 net rating.
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