Minnesota had a chance to pull out a much-needed win on a night it didn’t play very well at home Thursday against Chicago. But it didn’t get enough from its best player, so instead the Timberwolves fell, 120-115, to the Bulls for the team’s fourth-straight defeat.

Anthony Edwards has been superhuman with his shot making at the ends of games for much of the season. The rate at which he hit such consequential shots wasn’t sustainable. So a dip like the one he’s experienced the last two games — Edwards is 2 for 10 in clutch-time minutes in Minnesota’s last two losses to Utah and Chicago — isn’t all that surprising.

Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards reacts toward a referee during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Chicago Bulls, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

It was bound to happen eventually.

But the misses didn’t need to coincide with some of the mental lapses Edwards endured in the 70 seconds of Thursday’s loss.

With Minnesota leading by four and 1 minute, 10 seconds to play, Edwards got lackadaisical in his off-ball defense while guarding Chicago’s most potent scorer, Coby White. Josh Giddey hit White in the corner, and Edwards didn’t deliver a meaningful contest as White buried a triple to pull Chicago within one.

“He just stopped short,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said. “He’s got to get all the way out there with a better contest.”

Edwards credited the pass from Giddey, noting he didn’t expect the corner feed.

“So my reaction … I was stuck in quicksand when he caught the ball. It felt like it,” Edwards said. “So, I couldn’t really get a contest. I know I’mma get cussed out about that one (in the film session).”

On Minnesota’s ensuing offensive possession, Edwards simply dropped a pass from Julius Randle, which led to a Bulls steal. Then, on a Chicago sideline in-bounds play, Edwards didn’t commit to helping off an action, which gave Tre Jones an easy path to the rim for the go-ahead bucket.

“Coach drew up a good play and they bit on (the action),” Jones said, “so I was able to get into the lane and get a layup to go.”

“I just got to play better in a game like tonight,” Edwards said.

He largely lamented his shooting performance. The superstar’s 20 points came on a 9-for-25 showing from the field. Edwards is always quick to gauge an evening based on his offensive output.

But it was Minnesota’s defense that again did the Wolves in. Outside of a strong first few minutes Thursday, the Timberwolves slipped back into their poor defensive form that cost them games in San Antonio and then, most notably, Utah. T

That the embarrassing loss to the tanking Jazz didn’t awaken Minnesota on the defensive end is a bit alarming. Again against Chicago, Minnesota failed to contain the ball off the bounce and didn’t rotate well when it was forced to help after being beat at the point of attack.

“We have no defensive personality right now,” Finch said.

That’s a problem. Because, when the Wolves are at their best, that’s their defining trait. Edwards is frequently at the center of those efforts. When he’s dialed in, Minnesota is tough to beat. The 24-year-old guard is the Wolves’ lightning bolt, the man capable of supercharging the team performance and reversing the current rough course Minnesota is charting.

Wolves forward Julius Randle said “a lot of effort” is required for Minnesota to the elite form it’d appeared to capture just a week ago.

“We know what we have to do to be better in (the energy) department,” Randle said. “It’s a long season. There’s going to be ups and downs. A week ago we could’ve looked like the best team in basketball, and this week we can look like the worst. We just gotta find a way to find a consistency. Whatever we gotta do to recover, get our mind right, our energy right, our focus right, we gotta do it. It’s coming to hurt us. We do it sometimes and then we take our foot off the gas. We gotta find a way to find that energy consistently and play a full 48.”

If Edwards can lead the charge on that front, everyone else tends to fall in line. He didn’t do so Thursday, and his team suffered in kind.

“If I play halfway like myself (against Chicago), we win the game,” Edwards said. “So I don’t really blame nobody but myself.”

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By Mike Vorel, The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — Mike Macdonald set the path to this point.

On Wednesday, the Seahawks posted a video of Macdonald’s first team meeting on social media. It was April 8, 2024, and the fresh-faced 36-year-old coach faced the cast he inherited from Pete Carroll. He faced a team with a frustratingly fixed ceiling, and a single playoff win in the previous seven years. He faced the weight of enormous opportunity, the kind that propels some and exposes others. He faced Leonard Williams, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Devon Witherspoon and more.

He faced the future, a path he had yet to pave.

“One of the things I want you guys to feel going through this program is that we have a vision for you and this football team,” Macdonald said, with a sheet in one hand and a clicker in the other. “I want us to take a minute here and fast-forward to January at the NFC championship. It’s 30-something degrees. It’s wet. It’s windy. It’s [expletive] for them, but it’s just right for us. We’re loose. We’re focused. We’re confident. We just spent the last nine months stacking every opportunity.

“The team across from us in the other locker room, they’ve seen the tape. They know what they’re in for — 11 guys playing as one, every snap. They know that we’re like that. They know they’re facing a bunch of men that won’t give up. They know they’re facing a team that won’t die, that won’t quit. They know. It’s inevitable. So let’s go to work.”

Macdonald’s vision was inevitable. We know that now.

But the path had potholes. Twenty-one months, one starting quarterback, one offensive coordinator, one erratic wide receiver and several starting linebackers later, the Seahawks are here. On Sunday they’ll host the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC championship game — after securing a division title, home-field advantage and the No. 1 playoff seed. After dispatching the San Francisco 49ers decisively, in back to back games. After showing the world that they’re like that.

This is not an accident or a coincidence. It’s a masterpiece made of a million brush strokes. It’s a path paved with bricks, with sweat and blood and grit, by grinders bought into a larger goal. Forging the future. Making it real.

As Seahawks linebacker Ernest Jones IV said after Saturday’s 41-6 divisional round win over San Francisco: “Mike’s the biggest thing — just being able to start Day 1 [and say], ‘Hey, this is what type of team we’re going to be. But we can’t be that team unless we work for it.’ He’s constantly had us working at it.”

Perfection was never the point. Quite the contrary.

Macdonald is the biggest reason the Seahawks are here. Because his ego has never been bigger than his hunger to grow. Because he’s laid bricks alongside everyone else.

“I think what makes Mike special is he practices what he preaches,” said Williams, a second-team All-Pro in his second season with Macdonald. “He’s always talking about chasing edges. He’s always talking about what’s important now. He openly will talk to us about what he has to work on as a coach. He talks about where he lacks and where he wants to grow.

“You see the growth. I think him setting that standard as a leader seeps into the rest of the team and allows us to feel like we can be that same way. It allows us to show vulnerabilities where we’re weak and let other guys know that’s where we need to grow. It just creates an open dynamic where, when we’re in the film room and we’re coaching things, you don’t see guys getting offended. It’s like, ‘OK, this is something we need to attack.’ We’re not attacking the player. We’re attacking the problem.”

Macdonald and general manager John Schneider — who on Thursday was named NFL Executive of the Year by the Pro Football Writers of America — have spent 21 months attacking problems. When the Seahawks’ run defense struggled in 2024, they traded for Jones and instantly improved. When quarterback Geno Smith and wide receiver DK Metcalf requested trades, they signed Sam Darnold and Cooper Kupp, elevated Smith-Njigba … and upgraded. When the Seahawks offense sputtered, they fired coordinator Ryan Grubb and hired Klint Kubiak. When the offensive line lacked, they drafted North Dakota State standout Grey Zabel.

When key contributors went down, they inserted Drake Thomas, Ty Okada, Josh Jones, Brandon Pili, Patrick O’Connell, Cody White, Dareke Young, etc., and won anyway.

When the Rams torched a typically dominant defense for 581 total yards, 457 passing yards, 26 first downs, 6.6 yards per play and four touchdowns on Dec. 18 … well, just you wait.

Do you have any doubt Macdonald will respond Sunday?

“Any time the result doesn’t go your way, I got a big hand in how we play, too,” said Macdonald, whose defense allowed an NFL-best 17.2 points per game in the regular season. “There’s several [play calls] in that game that you want back. It stings that that’s the case, but that’s the case. So you’ve got to confront it and say, ‘OK, what are the things we can do throughout the week to put ourselves in better situations, where we can help our guys out more?’

“That’s the mentality. It was the same thing after [a loss to] Tampa Bay. You can feel it in real time. When your guys are in a certain position and it’s not necessarily advantageous for them, it turns out that’s on the design of the play and what you’re asking them to do.”

Macdonald’s vision was inevitable only because the Seahawks made it so.

And the message, like the path, was peppered with potholes.

When asked about his suddenly viral speech Wednesday, Macdonald smiled and said: “It’s funny, when [Seahawks chief communications officer Dave Pearson] showed me that, all I was thinking about was how nervous I was going to the first team meeting. I don’t know if you could tell. That was a good editing job by our people. There’s probably some more awkward pauses throughout that. …

“Everybody talks about what your first message to the team is going to be. It’s really overblown, frankly. You think about, ‘What am I going to talk to the team about? What’s the first thing? I don’t want to say the wrong thing.’ But it just came to me. I think God just allowed me to take the pressure away and said, ‘This is what you should say.’ It was pretty powerful. It’s pretty awesome.”

As was the path from purgatory to the brink of a Super Bowl.

But Macdonald’s forecast was less prophetic. Meteorologists call for dry skies Sunday.

The Seahawks will have to make life [expletive] for the Rams in other ways.

This is the year we hid it here

Where it was once said to have lain

In the woods by the lake you may catch a break

That may end in a toast of champagne

Hunt clues will be released at about midnight at TwinCities.com/treasurehunt each day of the hunt.

See the Treasure Hunt rules.

Where has the medallion been discovered in past years?

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Kirill Kaprizov scored early in overtime as the Minnesota Wild won at home for the first time in more than a month, coming from behind three times to beat the Detroit Red Wings 4-3 on a frigid Thursday night.

Mats Zuccarello recorded his first multi-goal game of the season for the Wild, who had not won at Grand Casino Arena since Dec. 20, but had gone 6-2-2 on the road since then. Minnesota got 31 saves from Filip Gustavsson and a power play goal from Kaprizov.

Lucas Raymond had a pair of goals for Detroit, which had won seven of its last eight before Thursday. The Red Wings got 35 saves from Cam Talbot in the game.

Special teams were the first period specialty for both teams, as Detroit took the early lead on the game’s first power play, and the Wild drew even the same way. On their first power play of the game, Mats Zuccarello made one of his patented cross-ice passes to Kaprizov for a wide-angle shot that slipped past the Red Wings goalie. For Kaprizov, it was his 26th goal of the season, and snapped a frustrating five-game streak that he had gone without scoring – his longest drought of the season.

The Wild dominated the offensive zone on a second period power play, getting five shots on the Wings goalie and getting another through that clanked the crossbar. But the go-ahead goal was not to be. Instead it was Detroit taking its second lead of the game when Lucas Raymond got lost behind the Minnesota defenders and slipped a low shot past Gustavsson. It was the second goal of the game for Raymond, who will be Gustavsson’s ally with Team Sweden next month in the Winter Olympics.

Minnesota again tied it on the opening shift of the third, when Zuccarello’s easy backhand flip made its way through traffic to the back of the net. And again Detroit had an answer, when James Van Riemsdyk spun away from a defender for a tap-in at the top of the Minnesota crease. And Zuccarello responded just 36 seconds later, cleaning up a mess in front of the Detroit net with his second goal of the period.

With five key veterans missing their just-completed three-game road trip, the Wild got 40% healthier on Thursday, with the return of second-line forwards Joel Eriksson Ek and Marcus Johansson. Eriksson Ek had missed the previous six games, and Johansson the previous three, both of them with lower body injuries.

Forward Matt Boldy and defensemen Zach Bogosian and Jonas Brodin are still unavailable, with Brodin not expected to return until after the Olympic break, as it was revealed on Thursday that he had undergone surgery for a lower body injury.

The Wild will make their lone visit to Detroit this season on Easter Sunday, April 5.

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