Anthony Edwards is always smirking during the Minnesota Timberwolves postgame press conferences.
The Timberwolves could have just beaten a team by 15 points, with Edwards scoring 40, and he will smirk as he doles out praise to his teammates. Or they could have lost miserably with Edwards committing too many turnovers, and he will still smirk as he tries to come up with an answer for why the loss happened.
Usually, he doesn’t have an explanation.
Edwards never seems too bothered after a loss. He’s confident in himself and his teammates to correct a deflating loss with an even more invigorating win. Last season, the Wolves corrected a 14-14 start to the regular season with a 17-4 finish and another run to the Western Conference Finals.
But this year, an end-of-season springboard into the playoffs seems increasingly unlikely. It’s mid-March, and the Wolves are still struggling to be the same team every night and have slid to the sixth seed in the Western Conference.
Attempting to figure out this team and what they are capable of is increasingly frustrating. And at this point, there probably aren’t any answers.
Minnesota concluded a pivotal Western Conference four-game road trip on Sunday. They went 1-3, losing 120-106 to the Los Angeles Lakers, 153-128 to the Los Angeles Clippers, and 116-103 to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Their lone win came in San Francisco on Friday, playing against a decimated Golden State Warriors team that was sans Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, and Draymond Green. Al Horford and Seth Curry also left with injuries early on in the game.
Coming in on a three-game losing skid, it was the type of advantageous situation that the Wolves sorely needed.
Minnesota topped the Warriors 127-117, but the Wolves should have stomped on them. At one point, the Timberwolves were dominating Golden State, leading by 25 points in the third quarter. But the Wolves let Golden State score 39 points in the third and eventually pull within seven points 3:32 minutes into the fourth.
“I just told the team (that) it’s a bit of a microcosm of our season,” Finch said regarding the 39-point third quarter. “We can play well. We do the right things, get rewarded for it. Then, (we) just completely lose focus, downshift a gear or two. They got back into it, and we stopped making the extra effort defensively for sure, had to regroup. And that’s been, unfortunately, part of our DNA.”
It’s at this point in the season — when the games become increasingly more important, and the weight of the playoffs bears down — that serious teams start fine-tuning their operation. The Wolves did it last year. And they had a chance to start doing it during their pivotal back-to-back set in Los Angeles last week.
Instead, their coach is proclaiming that energy downshifts are a part of their DNA, with the playoffs 14 games away.
The Wolves were off from the start in the Lakers and Clippers games, and their offense lacked intention. The ball stuck. Players weren’t moving off the ball. And when the Wolves passed the ball, they did so with lazy swing passes.
As a result, shots clanked off the rim, turnovers were frequent, and the Wolves let that impact their defense. The Lakers shot 63.4% from the floor in the second half and scored 75 points. The Clippers tied a franchise record for most points scored in a regulation game (153).
Edwards agreed with a reporter that the back-to-back set in LA was a bump in the road. Well, in that case, the Wolves should have coasted on a freshly paved road in San Francisco. Instead, they bumped along to a win that was far more difficult than it should have been.
It would have been fitting for the Wolves, who always seem to play at their best against tougher opponents, to charge into OKC and beat the Thunder on Sunday. However, they turned the ball over 22 times in the Paycom Center and allowed OKC to score 69 points in the second half, following a concerning trend for the Wolves.
The Wolves wanted to be a defense-oriented team this season, hoping to get back to the level they were at two years ago, when they led the NBA in defensive rating. Minnesota has been in the top ten in defensive rating all season, but its defense has not been nearly as consistent as coaches and players had hoped.
Over the last five games, Minnesota ranks 29th in defensive rating, while opponents have scored heavily in the second half. And since the All-Star break, their defensive rating ranks 21st. The truth is that the Wolves haven’t been a defensive-oriented team at all this season, and their defense is losing sharpness and focus as the games become more important.
Collectively, this team seems to have an immaturity they can’t shake. Their offense impacts their defense, and they grow apart when things aren’t going well. That’s what leads to the complete offensive and defense debacles.
The day before Thanksgiving last year, Edwards called the team front-runners. And well over a year later, they’re still pretending to be contenders. The Wolves can reach just as high peaks as any other team in the league. But their valleys are miles deeper than they should be.
Compounding things, in the four games leading up to Sunday, Julius Randle was averaging 12.3 points and two assists on 41.3% from the floor and 16.7% from three. Last season, he orchestrated Minnesota’s hot finish. But this season, he has been in a rut since the All-Star break as he deals with back spasms.
On Sunday, Randle had his best game since the All-Star break against a team in OKC that usually gives him issues. He scored 32 points and dished out six assists with one turnover on 11 of 18 shooting in 35 minutes.
Randle refinding his All-Star level groove over these final 14 games would be a massive development for Minnesota. If he can be productive offensively against OKC in a playoff series, that would obviously be even more important.
But Minnesota’s problems go far deeper than just Randle’s rut.
Once again, the Wolves struggled with ball security against the Thunder. Many of their 22 turnovers on Sunday were a product of lazy passes. The Wolves knew the importance of Sunday’s game. They also knew that they can’t turn the ball over that often and beat OKC. But they didn’t look like they did.
That lack of focus — which has been a theme all season — is concerning, not just for the Wolves over the rest of the regular season, but because they will likely face OKC if they make another run to the Conference Finals. However, that’s a big if, which keeps growing as the playoffs draw closer.
The Wolves have 14 games until the playoffs start. Right now, they are narrowly out of the Play-In Tournament with the tenth-easiest remaining schedule. They have the talent and depth to be the elite team they set out to be. But trying to figure out why they can’t remain mature and consistent with a defense that is trending in the wrong direction is nearly impossible.
The fact that this is a point of conversation this late in the season makes it almost as difficult to believe in Minnesota’s title aspirations.
