The Minnesota Timberwolves are on a bad path. It's definitely still early. Maybe they'll change the whole thing and in a month we'll all be singing a different tune. But things are going downhill at the moment and Anthony Edwards is not happy about it.
After losing their fourth straight game and seventh in their last nine games on Wednesday, the Wolves watched a 12-point lead not only evaporate but actually turn into one thanks to a 29 with just over seven minutes to play 11-point defeat turned -6 final run of the Sacramento Kings, Edwards was the star of his team.
“We've been trying to figure it out all year, man,” Edwards said of the Wolves' defense, which was significantly worse than last season's elite unit. “We thought defense was our identity and it doesn’t look like that. Our identity right now, me and Mike (Conley) have talked about it, I think we're pretty damn soft internally as a team. Not to the other team, but inside we're soft, like we can't talk to each other, just like when we play with a bunch of little kids, we just can't talk to each other and we have to figure it out, man, because we can't go that way go.
There was a lot more where that came from.
“Sometimes it’s difficult because you look at everyone and everyone has a different agenda,” Edwards said. “It’s like, what the fuck can I say? I'm trying to get better at this to figure out what the hell to say to get everyone on the same agenda, because right now everyone has different plans. And I think that's one of the main reasons why we're losing, because everyone out there has their own plans, like, I guess, their idea of what should happen and what's really happening.”
But wait, there's more. Edwards called the Wolves “frontrunners” and said the team was “grow apartsaid Timberwolves reporter Chris Hine of the Star Tribune. NSFW warning!
Edwards also made sure to acknowledge the, shall we say, decided displeasure (NSFW) of Wolves fans, who had high hopes after last season's conference finals, only to watch the team suffer just before trading Karl- Anthony Towns came I return to the more frustrating and frankly more recognizable reality of being a Timberwolves fan.
Here's a snippet of Ant's comments:
Suffice it to say, Edwards isn't pleased, and if you follow the NBA with even a hint of interest, you know he's not one to hold back his opinions. Showing up on an Olympic team that featured players like LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, Dude declared himself the No. 1 option.
He has every right to be so confident, by the way, and that's certainly the source of a lot of this frustration. He knows how great he is, and he can't stand playing on an 8-10 team that, at best, is trending toward a play-in tournament in the brutally unforgiving Western Conference.
There are structural problems with this team. The offensive spacing is constantly compromised by the presence of Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert. Donte DiVincenzo was supposed to be a boon for the shooting game, but he's having his worst 3-point season since his rookie season. The defense can penetrate, or at least sink into, Edwards' lanes with virtual impunity since there is no shooter they truly fear other than Edwards, who as a result is forced to pull up five more 3-pointers a game more than he did last season.
He's doing it at a rate of 43% so far and scoring 28 points per night. He does his part, but the offense as a whole is cramped and sluggish, noticeably lacking in juice. Losing a player of Towns' offensive caliber could explain some, if not many, of these issues. But the defensive drop?
How can this also be attributed to Towns subtraction? We're not exactly talking about Bill Russell here. In fact, despite his offensive dominance, Towns is currently destroying the Knicks' defense. To be fair, Randle isn't much better than Towns and may even be worse simply because he's shorter. But that can't explain how a team that was a historic defense suddenly wasn't even in the top 10 and was giving up more than four points per 100 possessions.
The formula should still be valid. After all, they are the same players. Perimeter attack dogs in Edwards and Jaden McDaniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker either completely clog traffic or direct it to an elite rim protector in Gobert. But it's just not the same.
Defense is all about energy and the energy that surrounds it, and it seems like this team was a positive force last year. This year it is negative. All you had to do was listen to Edward's speech on Wednesday night to realize at least that much.
