Thursday had all the makings of what could have been a celebratory night in Minneapolis
The Timberwolves were at home, hosting the Memphis Grizzlies in game three of their playoff series. Minnesota stole home court in game one and were looking to bounce back from their game two loss in front of a fired up Timberwolves crowd.
Minnesota raced out to a 39-21 lead after one quarter and had leads as big as 25 and 26 points during the game.
The Timberwolves and their fans were reminded the hard way that in the NBA everyone makes a run as Memphis was able to rally to stun Minnesota 104-95.
To put the game into one, sad succinct stat: Memphis outscored the Timberwolves 50-13 to end the game. That is dreadful.
So where did it all go wrong?
“Two terrible quarters of offensive basketball in the 2nd and 4th quarters,” Henry Lake said in his postgame show on WCCO Radio. “In both of those quarters the Wolves only scored 12 points. It wasn’t because Memphis became the best defensive team in the league. There was bad shot selection, foul trouble and it snowballed.”
There are many things that went wrong which allowed that scenario to happen. Lake said on his postgame show that one player should be constantly questioned about why this comeback happened, Karl-Anthony Towns.
“You win as a team and you lose as a team and this loss is not at the feet of just one player but one player does stand out and that is Karl-Anthony Towns,” Lake said after the game. “KAT is one of the faces of the franchise. He’s one of the young stars in the NBA but KAT is not a rookie. He is a veteran. Tonight, Towns got too emotional at times. He continues to get the offensive fouls and it’s hurting this basketball team. KAT has to be better in situations like this.”
If you thought the national media was rough on Towns after the play-in game performance against the Clippers, it got worse Thursday night.
Charles Barkley on the TNT postgame broadcast.
“They got talent, but they got no brains whatsoever,” Barkley said. “It’s just embarrassing.”
WCCO's Mike Max also had similar things to say about Towns on the WCCO Morning News with Vineeta Sawkar Friday morning.
"This is three out of four bad games for him, and he gets all out of sorts emotionally," said Max. "He's not that young in terms of years in the NBA. It just shouldn't happen to him. He comes apart, he comes unglued, and there's fouls, there's emotion. All of a sudden your best player becomes a non-factor, it's pretty hard to win."
So where does Minnesota go from here?
They have to have a short memory as game four is this Saturday night. More importantly the best players for Minnesota need to be their best players on Saturday evening and that starts with Towns.
Lake concluded by saying, “If Karl Anthony Towns isn’t better in game four than he has been in the previous games and if he gets into foul trouble, the Wolves aren’t winning this series.”
Thursday night made that pretty obvious. The pressure is on KAT. Let’s see if he steps up to the challenge.
Related
