A sixth place finish in the Western Conference and a guaranteed playoff series was at stake Tuesday night for the Minnesota Timberwolves who have played extremely well since December.
Playing a Washington Wizards team on the outside of the Eastern Conference playoff picture, and without their top scorer Bradley Beal, the Wolves were booed off the floor in the fourth quarter of a 132-114 loss.
The Wolves were badly outplayed by Washington and lost an opportunity to gain a game on Denver who also lost Tuesday night. The Wolves are now two games back of sixth with two games to play and need Denver to lose both games while they win-out.
Jon Krawczynski writes for The Athletic and is as tied-in to the Timberwolves as anyone in the Twin Cities. He joined Chad Hartman to talk about the team trying to get back to the playoffs for only the second time since 2004.
Krawczynski says to start with, we need to recognize the progress this team has made since finishing a very disappointing 21-39 last season, good for 13th in the West.
“I think that there is a real need to recognize how far this team has come this year, how competitive they are, and how much they have exceeded expectations, Krawczynski says. “They're probably going to end up winning nine or ten more games than most people expected. That's really, really good. But with that success now comes expectations. So now people are excited about them. And let's face it. The wolves themselves have been very confident in saying we can succeed. We can make noise in the playoffs. Well, if they don't figure out a lot of their defensive issues here over the next couple of games and get it shored up, it, it is going to be a quick exit.”
It was the defense that caused the most problems for the Timberwolves Tuesday. They just could not slow down Washington at all, and as soon as the Wolves offense hit a slump in the fourth quarter it was over. Krawczynski says if that doesn’t improve you can forget about any postseason success.
“Maybe they wouldn't even make it out of the play-in”, he says. And I think that you could categorize that as a big failure for this team after all of the improvement, if they were lose two games in the play-in and not qualify for the playoff. Their defense was so bad. That's a real issue for sure.”
One of the other concerns right now is Anthony Edwards. The second year players is on the verge of becoming a star in the league, but lately has been bothered slightly by a knee issue. Krawczynski says his defense is missed because he is not the same player he was earlier in the season. He also says D’Angelo Russell is not playing as well as he did earlier this year.
“Anthony Edwards is bothered by the knee a little bit and not as in tune. D’Angelo Russell at the start of the season was very involved and doing a good job, has fallen precipitously on the defensive end in the last few weeks. I think not having Beverly and Jayden McDaniels regularly has been big too, because one of the things that Chris Finch says a lot is that the thing that breaks them down most is dribble penetration. Their perimeter defense has not been able to keep the guards out of the paint, which collapses the defense, gets the offense a lot of easy looks either at the rim or from three. And so I think getting Beverly and McDaniels back will help a lot.”
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Krawczynski says right now, this is not a team that is built to go to the Western Conference Finals.
“They're a year or two way away from that,” Krawczynski says. “I think that it has been a very good story. They have been very competitive. I think with the right matchup in one round, they could really put a scare into a team and maybe even beat them. But this is not a team that I don't think anyone believes as currently constructed is a team that can win multiple rounds in a playoff yet.”
As for Edwards, while there is concern about his knee, Krawczynski thinks it is merely sore and won’t require any major surgery.
“I don't think anyone believes that he's going to need surgery,” he tells Hartman. “I guess that could always be revisited if it lingers more but I really think a lot of this for Anthony Edwards is he’s a young player starting to understand what playing 82 games means. And how to manage your body through that. A lot of players when they're in seven, eight, nine, ten, they will tell you that one of the biggest things they had to learn was how to take care of their body in a way that they just didn't never had to do when they were 16, 17, 18 years old. So with Edwards, that means staying diligent with rehab. That probably means refining the diet a little bit. That probably means a different kind of level of exercise and weight lifting and things like that.”
The Timberwolves play San Antonio next up on Thursday, a preview of what could be a second round game in the play-in Tournament. The Timberwolves are currently in seventh with the outside shot at sixth. They’ll need to beat the Spurs Thursday and the Bulls Sunday, plus have Denver lose their last two games (both home against Memphis and the floundering LA Lakers).
Should the Wolves end up in the play-in tournament, they’ll host the suddenly hot LA Clippers next Tuesday or Wednesday night at Target Center.
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