The Minnesota Timberwolves were defeated by the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday night, 105-91. For the Wolves, it was yet another lost opportunity to capture back-to-back victories for the first time all season.
Having rested veteran mainstays Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, San Antonio tasked Kawhi Leonard with a majority of the proverbial heavy lifting. And he delivered, scoring 31 points on 11-of-15 shooting to go with four assists and two steals.
Patty Mills added 15 points off the bench and finished with a team-high plus-minus of positive-29.
With the win, the Spurs improved to 13-0 on the road.
“He’s one of the best players in the league,” Andrew Wiggins said of Leonard.
“We forced him into contested shots, he just made ’em.”
Perhaps having to defend one of the league’s premier players would explain why Wiggins had a tough time getting into a rhythm offensively, finishing the loss with 11 points, five rebounds, two assists, and four turnovers. He went 1-of-3 from the charity stripe and failed to knockdown either of his 3-point attempts.
After shooting over 50 percent from beyond the arc and making nine trips to the free throw line per game over the first 10 contests, Wiggins has more-or-less regressed plummeted to the mean. Throughout the previous 10 games he shot 21.6 percent from 3-point range, and averaged just over six free throw attempts.
Stop me if you have heard this before: After heading into the locker room at halftime ahead by three, the Wolves did not play very well during the third frame, in which San Antonio made 11-of-16 field goal attempts en route to 29 points.
“I didn’t like our defense at all during the second half,” president-coach Tom Thibodeau expressed postgame.
“I thought we got just outplayed in every aspect.”
Thibodeau’s club was outscored 62-45 throughout the final two quarters.
Perhaps the only bright spot for the Wolves, Zach LaVine, did his usual thing, scoring a team-high 26 points on 9-of-16 shooting (4-of-8 3PM-A) to go with his three rebounds and two assists. The dude has been filling it up lately, as is reflected in the tweet below.
.@ZachLaVine finished with 25pts vs. Spurs tonight, his 6th 25+ point game this season. He had hit 25+ 6 times in his previous 60 games.
— Alan Horton (@WolvesRadio) December 7, 2016
“They’re so good with their system, everybody plays their role well and they don’t make many mistakes,” LaVine said of the Spurs. “When they do, they just keep coming. They’re a veteran team, they know what they’re doing.”
