With the Houston Rockets looking like they were starting to pull away from the Minnesota Timberwolves midway through the third quarter of Friday night’s game, things quickly went from bad to worse for Minnesota.
In a 120-102 loss to Houston on Friday at Toyota Center in the first game since the All-Star break, the Wolves lost their best player to a potentially serious injury.
With 3:17 left in the third quarter and the Wolves down 79-68, Jimmy Butler fell to the ground after suffering what appeared to be a non-contact leg injury.
In the video, you can see Butler goes down after planting his leg, ending up grabbing his knee on the floor. He had to be helped off the court while heading back to the locker room.
After the game, Minnesota head coach Tom Thibodeau gave an update on Butler, saying he suffered a right knee injury and will be re-evaluated on Saturday with an MRI.
Yahoo Sports‘ Shams Charania reported after the game that the X-rays on Butler’s right knee came back negative, but the Wolves will know of how serious the injury is when Butler has the MRI back in Minnesota.
Butler, who sat out the All-Star Game to rest up for the remainder of the season with the Wolves, started the game against the Rockets looking good, jumping out to a quick 10 points early on to help the Wolves take an early lead.
Butler, however, would end up exiting the game still with 10 points in the third quarter. But right now, the way he played from the end of the first quarter on is the least of his — and Minnesota’s — worries.
From the moment Butler went down, the Rockets seemed to have a pretty good handle on the game, jumping out as much as 17 points in the final quarter en route to the win.
On his 23rd birthday, Andrew Wiggins had a nice game to open the final stretch of the year, leading Minnesota with 21 points and four rebounds. Karl-Anthony Towns added his NBA-leading 52nd double-double with 18 points and 13 rebounds.
With Butler likely out for an extended period of time, Wiggins and Towns are going to do a bulk of the heavy lifting for the Wolves once again like they did for a majority of last season and once again in Friday’s game.
In facing a dangerous sharp-shooting team in Houston, Minnesota did a quality job in holding the Rockets in check until late in the third quarter. In the first half, the Wolves held the Rockets to 45 percent shooting – including just six 3-pointers – to trail by just one point heading into halftime.
In the third quarter, multiple things went wrong for Minnesota, including letting Houston do what they do best: play free-flowing basketball while lighting it up from deep. The Rockets ended up making 11 shots from behind the arc and finished at 46.2 percent from the field.
There were a number of things that went wrong in Minnesota’s loss in Houston, but all of those flaws are overshadowed by the biggest news of the night in Butler going down.
Following Saturday’s scheduled MRI, we will learn much more as to how serious the injury is and how the Wolves will attack the season moving forward.
But the season must go on, with the Wolves still in the middle of the playoff picture, with or without Butler. Minnesota is back in action on Saturday night, taking on Zach LaVine and the Chicago Bulls at 8 p.m. at Target Center.
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