TORONTO – Even after a preseason when the Timberwolves offense looked crisp, coach Chris Finch had a lingering thought in the back of his mind Wednesday night: that once the games start counting, the ball might tend to get “sticky,” a term Finch doesn’t like to trot out.
He looked like a prophet ahead of the Wolves’ 97-94 loss to Toronto when ball movement, or lack thereof, and poor decisionmaking were at the root of all the team’s issues.
“We didn’t trust the movement that we had seen all preseason,” Finch said. The early movement for the sake of it. … We were never able to really establish any sort of rhythm.”
The Wolves shot only 34% overall and 26% from three-point range. Anthony Edwards led them with 26 points, but he needed 27 shot attempts to reach that mark. Their poor shot selection often led to run outs in transition for Toronto, who took advantage of those opportunities for a calamitous 34 fast-break points.
“I would attribute 75% of it to the offense,” Finch said of Toronto’s success in transition.
That was the difference on a night when the Raptors weren’t setting the nets on fire either, but they got enough easy baskets and hit enough threes late (4-for-7 in the fourth quarter) to keep the Wolves from winning in Toronto for the first time since 2004. Edwards took responsibility for how badly the Wolves struggled on offense.
“Started with me not moving the ball,” Edwards said. “I don’t know what I was doing tonight, but I’ll get back to it. We’ll be all right.”
Edwards, who added 14 rebounds, said he didn’t get his teammates involved enough. That led to him making some poor decisions with the ball in his hands and holding it too long looking to shoot.
“I feel like I just got carried away and fell out of our strategy and started taking crazy shots,” Edwards said. “Fatigue definitely kicked in. I blame myself.”
Wednesday looked too much like last season for those hoping the Wolves had turned the page from what didn’t work a season ago. The Wolves tended to play their best basketball when Rudy Gobert (15 points, 13 rebounds) wasn’t on the floor with Karl-Anthony Towns (19 points, 10 rebounds) and Edwards. The three posted a minus-nine when they were on the floor together. The offensive rating of the starting lineup was a horrid 81.3 in the 15 minutes it played together.
“I think we had a little bit of early success with the ball being sticky. Guys were making some tough shots on our team and it was working early,” said guard Mike Conley, who had 11 points and three assists. “As the game goes on, we can’t rely on it. We can’t rely on that style of basketball.”
The third quarter put the Wolves’ problems on display. Toronto had 13 fast-break points in that quarter, and that led to a 10-point Raptors lead.
“When that ball stuck, we had a few weird plays where we tried to get fouls,” Conley said. “Threw it off the glass. It’s basically like a steal. Transition run out.”
The Wolves erased that deficit with a 14-3 run, their best stretch of the night, to take a 74-73 lead into the fourth quarter as some of the bench closed the quarter with Edwards and Gobert.
For most of the night, the Wolves played decent defense in the halfcourt, but in the fourth, Toronto hit some shots (50% for the quarter) when the Wolves didn’t. Dennis Schroder scored 22 for the Raptors and O.G. Anunoby had 20.
It was game one of a new season, but felt a lot like how the Wolves started things a year ago.
“We all got a little frustrated with the decisions we were making,” Conley said.