Through 15 games, there have only been four losing postgame Timberwolves locker rooms, but none of those were as quiet as the one following Minnesota’s 124-111 loss to the Kings on Saturday at Target Center.
After a while, forward Kyle Anderson remarked, “It’s like a funeral in here. We lost one game.”
Then Anderson made a crack about how often the Wolves were losing at this time last season. But after all the Wolves’ success this season, when they play like they did Friday — leaky in transition defense and the defensive glass, lacking ball movement and sloppy on offense — it can feel like a major letdown from the standards the Wolves established in their 11 wins.
“I love that,” forward Troy Brown Jr. said of the churchlike atmosphere. “It’s a bump in the road. … You don’t want everything to be all sweet at the beginning. I know we’re winning games and things are all cool and whatnot, but we needed a test like this just to humble us a little bit and let us go back, look at the film and see where we can be better.”
That film will show how the Wolves allowed 26 second-chance points by not boxing out as much as they should, and it will show how the Kings’ fast pace in transition and ability to get into the lane with De’Aaron Fox (36 points, 12 assists) led to several wide-open looks from three-point range. Early on, Sacramento wasn’t missing those (64% in the first half, 49% for the game), and the Kings raced out to a 22-point second-quarter lead. The Wolves came back late in the second and early in the third quarter to cut the lead all the way down to 72-70, but they never took the lead as their offense came to a standstill in the third quarter with just 15 points.
“I didn’t even know that. I thought we were scoring in the third,” said guard Anthony Edwards, who tried taking it upon himself to rescue the fledgling offense.
In the process, the Wolves’ hopes of advancing to the top-eight knockout stage of the NBA’s new in-season tournament took a body blow. The Wolves, who are 2-1 in group play, will need help from Golden State (2-1) to knock off Sacramento (3-0) on Tuesday. The Wolves will also need to beat Oklahoma City by a healthy margin to convert a remote chance of winning their group via a margin-of-victory tiebreaker.
Phoenix, which has a margin of victory of plus-34 compared to minus-3 for the Wolves, is likely to be the wild-card representative out of the Western Conference.
Edwards had 35 points on 21 shot attempts and was 17-for-18 at the free-throw line, but in that third quarter he was just 2-for-8, and there was too much isolation basketball. Karl-Anthony Towns finished with 27 points on 9-for-15, but the Wolves got some rough shooting nights from Nickeil Alexander-Walker (2-for-8) and Shake Milton (1-for-6, three turnovers). Brown was a positive bench presence with 10 points in 25 minutes.
“We could’ve gotten better shots in general out there,” coach Chris Finch said. “At times I thought [Edwards] and [Towns] were both trying to make the comeback all by themselves.”
Edwards tried to dribble around and through double-teams Sacramento was sending his way in the second half. The Wolves also weren’t thrilled with the officiating, despite going to the line 29 times compared to 11 for Sacramento.
“A lot of weird calls tonight,” said center Rudy Gobert (12 points, 11 rebounds). “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to say it. I’ve been in this league a long time, and some things sometimes don’t make sense to me. It is what it is. We’ve got to focus on the things we can control, as usual.”
Griping with officials was a trait of last season’s team, and the silence in the locker room was more regular as well. Memphis awaits Sunday, and so does a chance for the Wolves to show they can again move on quickly from a loss.
“We can’t come out and play how we played in the first quarter today, or we’ll be down 20 again,” Edwards said. “We come out ready to go, and we should handle business hopefully.”