A team built on its cohesion a year ago finally chose to shine a public light on its newfound cracks Wednesday night.
It was evident a week ago that something was amiss as Rudy Gobert not-so-subtly aired his frustration in Toronto with Julius Randle not feeding him the ball when he established deep post position. The center parked himself in the paint long enough to earn an offensive three-second call. Anthony Edwards approached Gobert, the center responded and exasperation overcame Edwards.
Hey, it happens. It’s a long season. Emotions will boil over. Then everyone takes a breath and moves forward, right?
“Name a perfect family,” Randle told reporters a couple days later. “I have never seen one.”
But this one is currently teetering on the edge of dysfunction, or as close to it as it has been at any point in Edwards’ five-year tenure in Minnesota. Fans have noticed a lack of joy with which the team plays. Trust hasn’t been entirely evident.
Irritation, though? Yes, Minnesota has that in spades.
There was plenty of reason for it after the first half of Wednesday’s home loss to the Kings. Minnesota surrendered 69 first-half points — 42 of which came in the paint. The Kings executed a layup line featuring rim protection from Minnesota, often because there was no one there to protect it. Coverages continue to be blown. That’s bound to happen when you’re as void of communication as these Wolves are.
Missed assignments, mind-numbing turnovers, a general lack of conceptual understanding. There were reasons to be mad at everyone. And players were stewing in their frustration at the half. Mike Conley had to do something. So he instigated a conversation, imploring teammates to state their gripes to open the dialogue.
“I was like, man, talk about it. Like, let’s not be quiet. If you have something to say to somebody or, you know, you need him to be in a certain spot, tell them,” Conley said. “And if you’re not in that spot, tell them why you weren’t in that spot. Like, let’s get this out. Because the more we hold on to stuff, it kind of compounds. You’ll be mad about three plays ago and (then) turn it over because you’re thinking about something that happened last quarter.”
The goal was to address one another. Guys couldn’t be afraid to speak or listen. You’re the target of a message? Take it in without getting angry or snapping back.
“We’re all trying to win,” Conley said. “And we got that out. We got guys locked in on just trying to the game collectively, sacrificing the defense, offense, and playing faster. And we showed that the first few minutes going into second half.”
Indeed, Minnesota played its best defensive quarter of the season in the third on Friday. It limited the Kings to just 12 points in the frame. Sacramento had as many turnovers (five) as made shots. The ship appeared to be righted, only to immediately veer back off course.
The Wolves were out-scored 29-6 over the game’s final seven-plus minutes. Suddenly, the halftime counseling session looked less like a fully-correctional shindig and more like Step 1 — admitting you have a problem.
And the Wolves do, indeed, have a problem. Anthony Edwards was done pretending otherwise after the loss. He’s written off so many losses to off nights or hot shooting performances by opponents. No more.
As reporters approached his locker, the star guard asked: “What you wanna know, why we’re trash?”
Uhh, yeah. How is a team fresh off a West Finals berth and featuring what appears to be one of the NBA’s most talented rosters appear to be floundering to such low depths just 18 games into the campaign?
Edwards touched on a number of shortcomings before seemingly hitting the nail on the head.
“Our identity right now – me and Mike was talking about it – I think it’s we soft as hell as a team, internally,” Edwards said. “Not to the other team, but internally, we soft. We can’t talk to each other. Just a bunch of little kids. Just like we playing with a bunch of little kids. Everybody, the whole team. We just can’t talk to each other. And we’ve got to figure it out, because we can’t go down this road.”
A team that can’t talk — that can’t one another accountable and make the necessary corrections during and between games to be effective — can’t win. At least not at the levels this group envisioned at the season’s outset. If an issue arose a year ago, it was nipped in the bud in moments.
But if you begrudgingly sit in silence and allow wrongs to occur, the wounds will fester. That’s why Minnesota — who never lost three-straight games at any point in the 2023-24 regular season — has dropped four straight. That’s why a couple bad players in succession snowball into an avalanche.
“That’s just us going into our own little shells and not wanting to talk. Being front runners,” Edwards said. “When everything is going good, we all, ‘Let’s go! Good (stuff), team!’ And then everything go bad and we compact and get into that little box. That’s what we’ve got to fix.”
What’s clear after Wednesday is those problems will require more than one halftime intervention to fix. It will likely take multiple conversations and a consistent approach of one side airing concerns, and the other accepting them. The latter is critical, and currently may be lacking. That certainly seems to be the case defensively. Asked what could be fixed on that end, Edwards was blunt.
“Doing what … the coach tells us to do. The coach tells us one thing, and we go out there and do a whole other thing. That’s not our gameplan. The (stuff) that you see us all doing on defense, that’s not what the coach is telling us to do. We supposed to be doing a totally different thing. And we go out there and try to manipulate, in our mind, that we smarter than the coaches. I don’t know, man. (It) is crazy right now,” Edwards said. “We always got something to say back. Even if you have something to say back, I feel like we just go out there and do our own (stuff).
“We supposed to be doing this, and we do something else. We supposed to be in this coverage, and we do something else. I’m supposed to be chasing somebody, I go under the screen. I’m supposed to be blacking and veering, I don’t veer. It’s just little stuff like that that we’re just not doing. It just comes from not following the gameplan and listening to the coaches, man.”
Over time, the blatant insubordination can lead to disdain. Edwards noted he doesn’t even know what to say at the moment, because he looks around the locker room and believes every single player has a different agenda.
“I’m trying to get better in that aspect, figure out what the hell to say to get everybody on the same agenda, because everybody right now is on different agendas,” he said. “I think that’s one of the main culprits of why we’re losing, because everybody out there got their own agenda. I guess their imagination of what’s supposed to be going on, and what’s really happening.”
Perhaps that’s why the collective bond appears to be absent. Edwards called the Wolves “frontrunners” at the moment. Everything is dandy when things are going well. When the operation takes a turn for the worse, no one says a word.
“That’s the definition of a frontrunner. We as a team, including myself, we all was frontrunners tonight,” Edwards said. “It was some (bull crap), for sure.”
Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said the players need to “lean in.”
“They have to be able to handle small pieces of adversity a lot better than they are, whether it’s a shooting slump or a bad call or a bad stretch of play or a poor decision by their teammate. They gotta get a lot closer and more connected through those times, for sure,” Finch said. “We just have to have a more consistent application of what we’re trying to do. Guys are a little bit in their own world when things aren’t going well for them, and it’s affecting both sides of the ball. That has to be changed.”
Conley said the Wolves need to “live with each other’s deficiencies.” Mistakes will be made by all. Shortcomings can’t lead to a sudden death.
“We’re just growing away from each other. It’s obvious,” Edwards said. “We can see it. I can see it, the team can see it, the coaches can see it.”
Frankly, the fans can see it — and they don’t like it. Last year’s collective spirit is gone. Fans booed its absence on Wednesday.
“We’re getting booed in our home arena,” Edwards said. “That’s so (freakin’) disrespectful, it’s crazy.”
It’s all very reminiscent of where the Wolves were two years ago around this time. After dealing for Rudy Gobert months prior to the start of the season, Minnesota was getting its brakes beat off in transition. The Wolves were 5-8 through 13 games. Players sat in the locker room and not-so-discretely discussed the lack of team speed due to its big-ball approach.
Asked how the Wolves dug themselves out of that hole, Edwards noted acquiring Conley at the trade deadline turned the tide.
“Because he was just so positive. And we’re just so negative right now,” Edwards said. “Last couple years, we was (tightly knit), and I just feel like we’ve gradually grown away from each other, which is the craziest thing, because most of us have been together. We’ve got two new players, that’s about it. Everybody else has been together.”
And Edwards noted the disconnect is a 1-through-15 issue at the moment. Conley noted Minnesota lost a handful of key players from a year ago. Karl-Anthony Towns was often a bright light in the locker room. Kyle Anderson was a vocal leader. Jordan McLaughlin was a calming presence. The Wolves could use a bit of all of that at the moment.
“We have an emotional game, got emotional players,” Conley said. “We just got to see all things kind of go right for us for a little while. And I think a lot of those guys as a whole snap out of that.”
What remains to be seen is if that can occur with the current roster. The Wolves are indeed fractured at the moment. Are they broken beyond repair? That’s still to be determined. Now that they’ve acknowledged the existence of the cracks, perhaps they can run to grab some glue. Wednesday’s halftime, duct-tape approach didn’t hold for long.
It doesn’t seem likely a Conley-like trade would be in the cards to save the day for Minnesota in the middle of the campaign. Players have to search high and low to see if a permanent fix is in their toolbox, and if everyone is willing to swing the hammer.
It’s one thing to say the right words. It’s quite another to deliver the proper actions.
“That’s what the message is right now is you can’t be immature about this. It’s a long season. You can win four in a row, you can lose four in a row, you can go on a 15-game win (streak),” Conley said. “We never know. And we have more than enough talent and a great coaching of staff to pull us through this. So we just got to keep that faith in that belief.”
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