The Minnesota Timberwolves suffered another embarrassing collapse on Wednesday night, blowing a double-digit fourth quarter lead in a 115-104 loss to the Sacramento Kings.
This loss was the fourth in a row for the Timberwolves, who now sit at 8-10 and are near the bottom of a very crowded Western Conference. This is a team that is slumping and struggling a ton with late-game execution, as it has blown multiple leads down the stretch of close games against quality competition.
After the game, star guard Anthony Edwards was officially fed up. Edwards went off about his team, including himself, for all kinds of things when speaking to the media, according to Chris Hine of The Minnesota Star Tribune.
“Anthony Edwards to the media. ‘Y’all wanna talk to me? (Yes.) What you wanna know, why we’re trash?’” Hine reported on X, formerly Twitter. “Proceeded to say the Wolves, including himself, look like a bunch of ‘front runners’ right now.”
Edwards wasn’t done, and went on to say that the team is “growing apart” and “can’t talk to each other anymore.” He then went on to expand on his front runners comment.
“We got up and everybody cheering and f*****g hype,” Edwards said, per Hine. “We get down again and don’t nobody say nothing. That’s the definition of a frontrunner. We as a team, including myself, we all was frontrunners tonight. It was some bulls**t, for sure.”
Edwards and the Timberwolves will have a chance to get back on track on Friday in NBA Cup play when they host a hot Los Angeles Clippers team.
Timberwolves failing to meet last season’s standard
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The Timberwolves are still finding their way in 2024-25 after reaching the Western Conference Finals last season. That playoff run raised the expectations for Anthony Edwards and the rest of the team coming into the season, and they may be struggling with that a little bit.
Trading away Karl-Anthony Towns for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo was an attempt to get deeper and add shooting to the bench, but it has disrupted the chemistry of the starting lineup and made it much harder for them to score down the stretch of games. The Timberwolves already struggled with stagnation on that end of the court over the last few years, and now the issue is even worse with worse spacing around Anthony Edwards.
The Timberwolves have also been struggling without Mike Conley in the lineup lately due to injury. Without Conley in the game, the Timberwolves have nobody to organize the offense and get the action started in the half court. When the game slows down in the fourth quarter, the Timberwolves consistently resort to iso ball and fail to get good shots.
That was a common theme yet again on Wednesday in a lifeless closing stretch against the Kings that saw the Timberwolves play a lot of lackadaisical offense and lazy defense. The Kings scored seemingly every time while the Timberwolves struggled to get any good looks.
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