Blazers 106, Wolves 98: A(nother) Resounding Disappointment

A deeply uninspired team has dropped three straight to sub .500 teams in the worst ways. What else is there to explain?

Three days ago, The Wolves were roughly 15 seconds away from winning their fourth game in a row.

They didn’t.

In a turn of events, they find themselves losers of three straight, playing lackadaisical and inconsistent basketball from quarter to quarter. 10-point favorites heading into Wednesday night, it was a fitting cap to a stretch that not many saw coming to a young Portland Trail Blazers team that was down three of its top rotation players.

In the newly-minted three game skid, they’ve scored less than 100 points in two of them.

The worst part could possibly be that it didn’t start anything close to bad. The Wolves committed just one turnover in the first quarter and jumped out to an early 13 point lead. It looked quickly as if it was going to be a back to back that Portland mailed in and the Wolves could find some swagger that they had shown just a few games ago.

But the Blazers proceeded to ramp up their ball pressure, and it triggered massive struggles in executing the offense and making basic passes both up the floor and in the halfcourt to move the defense. Seven of the Wolves’ 13 turnovers came in the second quarter alone.

It was some of the worst handling of full court pressure seen in awhile at the professional level. The Blazers generated energy off of their defense, and a slow unraveling started to occur from there.

It wasn’t as if Portland didn’t come without errors of their own. They turned the ball over 20 times to the Wolves 14 turnovers.

But Portland scored 21 points off of those 14 Wolves turnovers. Minnesota scored just 12 points off of Portland’s 20.

Plus six in turnover margin and minus 9 in points off turnovers. Backbreaking.

Perhaps another thing that took the energy out of the ball for Minnesota was the continuation of some of the shooting woes that we’ve seen so far. While they shot a ton of them, they got incredibly good looks early on from deep and couldn’t convert, failing to capitalize on the early 13-point lead and converting on opportunities that could have put the game out of reach early on.

“We couldn’t make a shot all night, and they threw in some timely ones,” Head Coach Chris Finch said afterward. “We had a bunch of good looks that we didn’t make.”

The Wolves finished the game 7-39 from three point range. That’s 17 percent for those keeping track at home.

Could a lot of the hot takes currently being thrown around during a rough early-season stretch be prevented if just a few more three balls go in? Certainly. It would have prevented losing back to back games to a Blazers team that played hard but isn’t very good. But perhaps it would also have put off talking about some of the more glaring issues that underscore this team in its current state.

“It’s a rough patch,” Finch said. It’s early on.”

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Photo by Cameron Browne/NBAE via Getty Images

Cold Ragu

It’s been a really tough couple games for Donte DiVincenzo. Like, really tough. Both in eye test and in the box score.

It was another one of those for DDV on Wednesday night, not only becoming a victim of one of Donovan Clingan’s eight blocks, but missing the mark pretty handsomely on several open threes.

He wrapped up the night shooting 1-10 from the field (0-6 from three) and clocked a minus eight.

Over the Wolves last three games, he’s turned in:

• 4.3 PPG
• 1.0 AST-TO Ratio
• 22.7% FG
• 18.8% 3P
• -25

A player with the expected role that DiVincenzo has and will have during the season simply cannot turn in three straight dud games. It’s early on, but it does seem as though the DDV experience is more of a roller coaster ride than a smooth drive down the street. One night, it’ll be the Harlem Globetrotters with the second unit and he and Naz Reid turn in matching plus 33s. The next night, we may get something closer to what’s happened on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Either way, whatever the Wolves can do to get the roller coaster to have a few less major valleys, early trends say that bodes well for the left hand record column moving forward.

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Photo by Alika Jenner/Getty Images

Dilly Time

The Wolves’ early first round pick saw his first meaningful regular season minutes, and outside of losing his shoe on a drive to the basket, played pretty well in the aggregate.

“I thought he came in and gave us really good minutes,” Finch said. “It was a good first showing for sure.”

Contrary to what we had seen from Dillingham in Summer League and one of Finch’s earlier critiques of him in press conferences, he looked to pass first, found wide open teammates and made things happen as soon as he got into the game. If it weren’t for a poor shooting night from the team overall, he likely would have exited his first burn on the court with six or more assists.

Positive reviews out of the gate, and with an average Josh Minott showing Wednesday as well, it will be interesting to see where Dillingham is able to poke his head into the lineup moving forward.

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Emptying the Notebook

• There’s a lot of criticism on the coaching right now. I think a lot of it is fair. But Finch and Micah Nori aren’t out there pressuring the ball and making lazy passes across the floor to throw possessions away. All they can do is provide ways to make the easy play and preach ball pressure. Let’s stop calling for his job, please – he’s an excellent coach and his top assistant is going to be one of the more sought-after candidates this offseason.
• This was a really bad back-to-back for Rudy Gobert. Rim protection was lackluster and he’s been subpar running the floor. I’m still waiting on the dominant, 15 point, 15 rebound Rudy game we got so frequently a season ago.
• We’re still in November. This team was always going to have some stretches they weren’t supposed to have early in the season. The most frustrating part right now is we’ve seen this team play well. This is not the first season of Rudy Gobert where we had not seen the team gel in one single game.

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Highlights

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Up Next

The Wolves keep the road-trip going and have an excellent opportunity to get back on track in the same place that they picked up their first win on the season; Sacramento.

It will be the second game for the Wolves in the NBA Cup group stage, and the Sacramento Kings will be coming in riding high off of a sizable win against the Kevin Durant-less Phoenix Suns. The game takes place on Friday, November 15 at 9:00pm CT.