Portland entered Sunday’s matinee in Minneapolis as a loser of five straight games. Four of those losses had come by 24-plus points.
The Blazers were sans players like Damian Lillard, Anfernee Simons, Jerami Grant and Jusuf Nurkic, who have been put on ice as Portland attempts to work its way up the NBA draft order.
The Blazers were dealt a crushing blow amid that pursuit Sunday, as they topped Minnesota 107-105. In a season in which the Timberwolves have dropped a number of head-scratching games against cellar-dwellers, this one easily took the cake.
“It’s a game at home against a team that shut down their best players. For us it was an opportunity really to keep getting better, to work on our habits and, yeah, get a win,” Wolves center Rudy Gobert said. “So it’s definitely a tough loss. I’m not happy with the way I played and I’m not happy with the way we played as a team.”
Minnesota dropped to 5-10 this season against the teams currently located in the bottom five of the league’s standings. But Sunday’s contest should not have been devoid of urgency. The Timberwolves almost certainly needed to win their final four games to dodge the play-in tournament. Their entire starting lineup was intact.
Yet Minnesota came out lifeless in the first frame and never really delivered a punch to a team just waiting to lay down on the mat. The Wolves didn’t really toy with their food so much as they never pulled up a seat to the table.
“Man, our fault. Guys who played tonight, all on us. We didn’t come ready to play, as you can see,” Wolves guard Anthony Edwards said. “It’s just a level of respect for the game. You’ve got to treat every game the same, and that’s something that we lack.”
They allowed an under-sized team to nab 11 offensive rebounds. They committed 18 turnovers that led to 21 Portland points and surrendered 25 fastbreak points. Karl-Anthony Towns was a non-factor, finishing with the same number of shot attempts (3) as turnovers as he battled foul trouble all game.
Those are all bad habits that plagued this team when Minnesota was at full strength earlier in the season. Any thought that the Wolves had corrected those issues is now in question after, when finally generally healthy again, they look like the same team that started 10-11 against lackluster competition.
“Things that we haven’t been doing for a while and it kind of reared their head in the last two games and they just outworked us,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “Certainly could be a combination of, teams are running us now because we’ve got the bigs out there, but it’s the turnovers that are fueling that. Just a lot of bad passes in tight spaces. I think that’s the type of stuff that we have to certainly mitigate because we get caught unbalanced and not getting back.”
Every time Portland found itself in trouble Sunday, there was an easy bucket lurking around the corner to get the Blazers back on track. The Wolves went up 12 on an Edwards dunk with 3 minutes, 37 seconds to play in the third quarter, but Portland quickly responded with a pair of wide-open 3-pointers and then a Kevin Knox fastbreak bucket to trim the deficit back to four.
The Blazers retook the lead with eight minutes to play in the fourth, and the Portland team which has many players just getting their first taste of legitimate NBA action out-executed the Wolves down the stretch.
Minnesota went 6 for 17 from the field in the fourth while committing four turnovers, while 19-year-old Blazers wing Shaedon Sharpe scored eight points over the game’s final 4 minutes, 12 seconds.
Down two in the closing seconds, the Wolves still had a chance to knot the contest at the end of regulation. But Portland (33-45) double-teamed Edwards — who scored 37 points on 30 shot attempts — forcing the guard to get off the ball. After two swing passes, the ball found Kyle Anderson, who attacked from the corner. Anderson got into the lane, but underestimated how much time he had to get off a shot. His quick flip went off the shot clock, giving the ball to Portland with less than a second to play.
And another stunning loss was in the books.
“Yeah, I think a majority of NBA players would tell you it’s easy to get up for the Denvers or the Golden States and the good players. But you have to have the appropriate fear in this league and a respect for, I don’t want to say these type of teams, but the teams that ain’t doing so well,” Anderson said. “So, not sure what it was, what it is. I know we all wish we could have it back, but it don’t work that way. We got to be able to handle business.”
Minnesota (39-40) likely needs to win its final three games to avoid a No. 9 seed that would force the Wolves to win two play-in games just to make the playoffs.
“I think we just need to lock back in and figure it out, come together as a team and win these last three games,” Edwards said. “We need to win these last three, I think that’s the most important thing.”
