The first two times the Timberwolves played the Utah Jazz, they looked like the better team. At the very least, they looked like a team that could hack it with them.
And while the Wolves remained without Jimmy Butler in this one — along with Jeff Teague and Derrick Rose — Sunday’s 121-97 loss to Utah made it clear that the Jazz are the superior team heading into the playoffs.
Nothing looked good for the Timberwolves. They didn’t shoot well, they didn’t defend well, they had ugly turnovers, and their stars didn’t step up when the game started.
It was against the best defense in the NBA, but it was also sloppy and lacked intensity, as Tom Thibodeau put it.
“We always talk about two things: the execution and the intensity,” Thibodeau said in the post-game press conference. “What we did tonight wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t even close.”
The Jazz looked like a team dead in the water in the middle of January, but after Sunday’s win, they’re 25-5 over their last 30 games. Additionally, them holding Minnesota to 97 points on 38-of-90 shooting and 8-of-24 from deep is consistent with their league-dominant defensive rating over that same stretch.
They’ve been this good since Defensive Player of the Year candidate Rudy Gobert got back. He had four blocks in this game, but his real impact is shown on the shots he alters by his mere presence.
This happened a number of times with several players on the roster. Tyus Jones was one of them.
Nemanja Bjelica is another.
Some fearless basket-attacking from Andrew Wiggins was key to the Wolves starting the game off on a good note, and is especially impressive when his victim is Gobert in the middle.
But as soon as the second teams started to pile in — Jones started at point in Teague’s absence, with Aaron Brooks backing him up — the game quickly started to go Utah’s way.
“We let them get too comfortable,” Jones said. “They were moving the ball, we weren’t taking anything away on the defensive end. That’s on us. They played tougher than us tonight and that was the difference.”
To make matters worse for anyone stuck on the team’s trading of Ricky Rubio, La Pistola had himself a night.
He kept pace on the 3-point line with the entire Timberwolves team — at one point, it was six for the Wolves versus five for Rubio — did his usual dealing at the point, and made it hard for players to score. Even when matched up with bigger players, he held his own on that end.
Rubio and Rookie of the Year candidate Donovan Mitchell combined for 43 points on 19-of-29 shooting, but their production — good as it was — was not the main story.
The Timberwolves knew what was at stake, and against a team fighting for the same thing, a blowout made no sense in those terms.
But it might be something as simple as the Jazz being both healthier and that much better than the Timberwolves right now. Past the fact that Butler and Teague’s absence are obvious and major flaws in Thibodeau’s rotation, the Wolves still have Towns. They still have Wiggins. They still have Gibson, Jones, Crawford and Dieng.
Is that a dominant group of players? Absolutely not, but it’s also not a team that should lose by 26 points. They’re shorthanded, but coming off as broken as they looked Sunday did not make sense to them.
“Your only chance is with great intensity,” Thibodeau said. “When you lose another guy you can’t go in and think, ‘OK, this is good.’ No, you got to compete on every play. Until we understand that, there will be tough nights.”
There is a silver lining, if you look at the schedule. This game was easily the toughest of the remaining games. They still have a game with the Lakers and another with Memphis, two non-playoff teams.
“We have to get back to the drawing board,” Towns said. “We have to go work on ourselves and make sure we’re better for Denver. It’s up to us to put the effort and do the things we do on the court.”
But they also have two games remaining against the Denver Nuggets. The Wolves have the advantage of a couple more wins with few games to go, but their play on Sunday proved they still haven’t figured out how to keep their intensity level high in the games that matter.
Even over their last five games, it’s been rough. They have two wins in the past week, but both are against bad teams. One win was by single digits against a tanking Hawks team when Towns scored 56, and the other was by a single point against a Mavericks team — also in tanking mode.
There’s still time to figure it out, but not much. Even with their playoff odds looking better, and even with Butler and Teague’s inevitable return near, the Wolves don’t look like a playoff team right now.
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