The Minnesota Timberwolves had an 11-point lead over the Detroit Pistons entering the fourth quarter, but Detroit outscored the Wolves 27-13 in the final 9:57 and won 100-97.
Jimmy Butler missed a third free throw to tie the game at 98, as well as a buzzer-beater that he had a clear look at but rimmed out. Reggie Jackson approached Butler before his final free throw, potentially throwing him off his rhythm.
Butler stared Jackson down while at the free-throw line, but downplayed the interaction after the game. “I just missed one. It happens,” he said. “Everybody misses free throws. I don’t like to miss them, nobody does, but he had nothing to do with that, I just missed one.”
Wolves head coach and president of basketball operations Tom Thibodeau was concise with what went wrong in the fourth quarter. “Turnovers got us,” he said. “You gotta play for 48 minutes. We didn’t play our best in the fourth. The fourth quarter is different.”
He was predictably brusque after seeing his team’s fourth-quarter lead wither away and left the podium after only speaking for a minute and a half.
He likely was trying to send a message to his team about turnovers through the media, and carelessness with the ball did hurt the Wolves as the game came to a close. They finished with 20 turnovers total, although they didn’t turn the ball over once in the final 6:58 and were up seven points when they committed the final turnover.
But there were other issues in the final frame:
- Ball movement, which had been good earlier in the game, came to a standstill, and the offense stalled.
- Detroit scored on nine straight possessions.
- Butler and Towns got five shots total, and Butler’s only two looks were in the final 10 seconds.
Also, the entire bench, except for Nemanja Bjelica, was in the minus, where all the starters except Gibson were plus. Bjelica and Jamal Crawford had 13 points combined, and the bench only scored eight points total in the second half.
The Pistons beat the Wolves 122-101 on Oct. 25 and have only lost three games since, compiling an 11-5 record — good enough for second in the Eastern Conference. The Wolves remain at No. 3 in the West, for now, with a 10-6 record.
It was a battle of two up and coming teams with a similar organizational structure. Thibodeau is the president and head coach in Minnesota; Stan Van Gundy has the same role in Detroit.
The collapse may remind the 16,069 in attendance, and countless others watching on TV, of the ghosts of Timberwolves past. But something is different this year, and it was evident based on the perturbed emotions in the locker room after the game.
This team expects to win. And given what they did in the offseason and how they have started out this year, they should.
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Wiggins echoed Thibodeau in saying that the team has to adjust to playing in the fourth quarter. “Three quarters of good defense,” he said. “The fourth quarter we kind of let up, you know, fourth quarter you’ve gotta be more conscious, you know, execute more.”
Gibson and Towns took the “one of those games” approach, pointing to specific incidences that went wrong, and how a bounce or two could have gone their way.
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