Are the Big, Bad Wolves Back?

The Minnesota Timberwolves were at a crossroads 18 games into their season.

They had just suffered a late-game collapse at home against the Sacramento Kings, who ended the final 5:28 minutes on a fatal 23-4 run, sending the Timberwolves into Thanksgiving self-evaluating what had gone wrong. They fell to 8-10 on the season and lost their fourth straight game, Minnesota’s longest losing streak in nearly two years. Anthony Edwards ended the night by calling out the team in uniquely explicit terms.

“Our identity right now is we are soft as hell internally as a team,” Edwards told the media following Minnesota’s 115-104 loss against the Kings. “We can’t talk to each other. It’s just like we are playing with a bunch of little kids – everybody, the whole team. We just can’t talk to each other. We have to figure out, man, because we can’t go down this road.”

Coming out of Thanksgiving, the Wolves had a few options. They could continue on their mediocre path, allow the wheels to fall off completely, or pull themselves up by the bootstraps and fight back to become a team fans can be proud of.

“We thought defense was our identity,” Edwards said. “But it’s not looking like it at all.”

Minnesota was two games below .500 and ranked 12th in the Western Conference. Only the Portland Trail Blazers (8-12), Utah Jazz (4-14), and New Orleans Pelicans (4-16) were below them. Eight days later, the Wolves were two games above .500 and tied with the Phoenix Suns for the seventh seed in the West after three-straight impressive wins against the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, and Golden State Warriors.

They suddenly started looking like the big, bad Wolves they were a season ago. However, Sunday’s loss in San Francisco proved they still have a ways to go until they reach a level capable of leading them to another deep postseason run.

The Wolves closed out November with an ugly 93-92 win at home against the Clippers. Minnesota won by any means necessary, but it committed 22 turnovers and shot 41% from the floor – barely squeaking by in a game where Tyrone Lue shockingly didn’t foul at the end. The Timberwolves puffed the wind back in their sails with that victory. Still, scoring 93 points and turning the ball over on 23.4% of their possessions wasn’t going to get it done as they approached a gauntlet of a December schedule.

The Timberwolves have the third-most difficult December schedule in the NBA, not including the Dec. 13 home game against the Los Angeles Lakers and the 15th road game against the San Antonio Spurs, which the NBA added to the schedule last week. All 13 of Minnesota’s December games are against playoff-hopeful, playoff-contender, or championship-contending teams, eight of which are on the road.

Minnesota attacked its most challenging stretch of the season head-on, rattling off three straight dominant wins after their gritty home victory against the Clippers. The Wolves had a plus-74-point differential combined in those three games. Minnesota limited its opponents to 250 points, an NBA-low over a three-game span this season and a franchise-low since 2008.

“[We] carried over our performance from the last few games,” Naz Reid explained following Minnesota’s 107-90 win against the Warriors on Friday. “It was hard to find it, but we are here now. Defense is our identity.… Defense is what matters.”

Less than two weeks after being in an identity crisis, the Wolves figured it out. They held their fourth straight opponent under 100 points. It wasn’t a coincidence that the Wolves were 4-0 in those games. When the defense is connected and aggressive, Minnesota’s offense can go through cold stretches without it being fatal, which was common last season.

Coming off a wire-to-wire 108-80 win against a banged-up Clippers team in Inglewood, the Warriors gave the Wolves more of a challenge in San Francisco on Friday. However, Minnesota’s defense kept them in control for most of the game, which kept the door open for Edwards to take over down the stretch. Ant was responsible for 20 of Minnesota’s 29 points in the fourth (nine as the passer, 11 as the scorer).

In the locker room after the game, Edwards praised his teammates for their defense and light-heartedly called out Julius Randle and Reid for “never playing defense.”

Video via DaneMooreNBA / X

Minnesota was playing at a level where Ant felt he could poke fun at his teammates, even with Randle sitting right next to him. The Timberwolves were no longer playing soft, nor were they front runners. They looked like the big, bad Wolves from a season ago. The vibe meter was taking its first sizable assent of the season four games after it was at its lowest point in over a year.

The highly connected, aggressive, and meticulous defense that has quickly grown to be a constant over the last week shined through in the first quarter against the Warriors on Sunday. The Wolves were making the correct rotations and denying Golden State’s attempts to get past their first line of defense, forcing the Warriors to shoot 9 of 26 (34.6%) from the floor and 2 of 12 (16.7%) from deep.

Golden State put together an 11-4 run to open the second quarter, converted 15 second-chance points off nine offensive rebounds in the first half, and Steph Curry had 19 points in 17 minutes. Still, Minnesota responded well and took a nine-point lead into halftime.

Then, the big, bad Wolves lost their frightening edge.

“Normally, there is one point in the game I like to point to where you lose the game, but this game had two,” Chris Finch told the media following the Wolves’ 114-106 loss. “The first was the start of the third quarter.… Second, we lost our composure down the stretch.”

The Warriors opened the second half like Little Red Riding Hood after she returned home with cakes and butter, filling the big, bad Wolves with heavy stones. Those heavy, fatal stones came in transition. The Warriors pushed the tempo in the third quarter, rattling off 12 fastbreak points and catching the Wolves sleeping in their grandmother’s clothes after halftime.

“We are not going to survive many 44-point quarters, and that is where the game changed,” Finch told the media postgame.

Golden State shot 16 of 22 (72.7%) from the floor and 6 of 9 (66.7%) from three-point range en route to its 44-point third quarter. After the Warriors took a three-point lead with 59 seconds left in the frame, Nickeil Alexander-Walker drilled a right-wing three to tie up the game at 90 a piece with 6.1 seconds left. Steph Curry responded to that make with a pull-up 38-foot three at the buzzer, which summed up Minnesota’s third-quarter transition woes.

“At the start of the third quarter, [the Warriors] had ten transition baskets in the first five or six minutes,” Finch said. “A lot of them came after we scored, which is inexcusable.”

The Wolves needed another one of those late-game takeovers from Edwards to put away a hungry Warriors team that had lost six of their last seven games. Instead, Ant gave his team the opposite by recording three points on 1 of 7 from the floor and turning the ball over twice.

Gobert said Edwards’ takeover on Friday “felt like Christmas” because of Ant’s decision-making. Edwards read the defense well and repeatably made the right plays, lobbing the ball to Gobert twice and finishing the game with nine assists, four of which came in the fourth quarter.

After Sunday’s loss, which featured way too much hero ball from the Wolves down the stretch spearheaded by Edwards, Gobert said, “It wasn’t Christmas.” Still, he likes where his team is even though they are one game over .500 almost two months into the season.

The Timberwolves are figuring things out less than 12 days after losing their fourth straight game. The West Coast swing proved their identity is, in fact, on defense. However, Minnesota must become more consistent to be the big, bad, and downright merciless Wolves they were last season. The Wolves may not be front runners right now, but they played soft in the second half on Sunday and can’t be caught sleeping by Little Red Riding Hood again.