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The collective confidence of the Minnesota Timberwolves is a veneer, a paint job without a primer, the cracks showing through under cursory scrutiny.
It is hard to believe in a team that, at the profound level where it really matters, has so little legitimate belief in itself.
With 11 games yet to play, this has been the story of the Timberwolves 2024-25 season. It is not grandiose enough to be called a tragedy, but it’s a flaw too persistent to ignore. Or to overcome.
An eight-game winning streak – the longest in franchise history since 2004 – was not enough to salve the uncertainty. On Monday night at home against the Indiana Pacers, the Wolves had a choice opportunity to make it nine in a row and leap over the Golden State Warriors for sixth place in the Western Conference, the final playoff spot to avoid the play-in competition and proceed directly to the first round.
Indiana was massively short-handed, minus four of its top five scorers, a quartet that also included their ace playmaker Tyrese Halliburton and two leading rebounders, Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner. Four minutes into the second half, Andrew Nembhard was ejected for two technical fouls and with 3:19 to play in the fourth quarter, Bennedict Mathurin fouled out.
At that point, the Wolves were up by four points, having battled back from a 15-point deficit in the first half. The Pacers were bereft of their top six scorers, their top three rebounders, and their two assist leaders. Gathering the remnants, they continued the theme that defined the game and the outcome, performing more assertively, with more discipline and with a greater sense of purpose than the Wolves, taking it into overtime, where they prevailed 132-130.
Two nights later the New Orleans Pelicans, owners of an 18-51 record and fresh off a 46-point thrashing (127-81) at the hands of the Detroit Pistons, came into Target Center. Surely the Wolves had learned their lesson from the previous game and would not take the Pels (and their chronically injured star Zion Williamson, who has torched them in the past) lightly.
No, that is not a lesson these Wolves can learn by heart. In fact, similar circumstances earlier in the season had already suggested they would not exploit the psychological advantage of facing a less-talented, recently battered foe. On Nov. 12, the Wolves went into Portland for a two-night, back-to-back with the Trailblazers at a seemingly propitious time: Portland had just suffered a 45-point defeat, their eighth in the first 11 games of the season. No matter: The Wolves lost both games to an opponent that is currently 12th in the 15-team Western Conference standings. Then, on Feb. 1, the Washington Wizards came to Minneapolis burrowed into their second 16-game losing streak of the season, capped by a 38-point defeat two nights earlier, and beat the Wolves 105-103.
On Wednesday night, the Wolves still had the possibility of making the loss to the shorthanded Pacers one of those classic stumbles into ineptitude that is bound to occur for any team that hadn’t tasted defeat in over two weeks. With the conference standings bunched and merely a dozen games left to play, another lapse would be a significant derailment.
That felt like the story 90 seconds into the second quarter and Minnesota up by 14, 38-24. Another couple of buckets and the likelihood of the Pelicans consigning themselves to defeat would be at a near-certainty.
That’s when the Wolves hopped off the gas. New Orleans scored on 10 straight possessions, triggering a 22-5 run, the last 14 in a row, to seize the lead at 46-43. The blitz was completed in four minutes and 20 seconds, during which time the Wolves did not grab a single rebound and made just 2 of 8 shots while the Pels were going 9 for 11.
The blame was collective – nine different players logged time – and permanently altered the dynamics of the game, with the two teams separated by no more than six points the rest of the way. Yet again, the Wolves had pumped oxygen into a mostly inert opponent, in situations where they would have suffocated them a season ago.
Every one of the 82 games each NBA team plays has its own dynamic, of course. The beauty of the league is that anything can happen every night over the course of nearly six months of action.
But it is significant that the Wolves have played in more “clutch” games than any of the 30 teams – 43 of them out of 71 thus far. Clutch is defined as a time with five minutes or less to play in the fourth quarter and overtime when the teams are five points or fewer apart. The Wolves have lost 25 of those games, most in the NBA, with a .419 winning percentage that ranks 25th overall.
In the recent losses to both Indiana and New Orleans, Minnesota’s vulnerable character was on display in the first half. From the onset they failed to take the short-handed Pacers as a serious threat and were consistently outhustled and less mentally alert and cohesive despite boasting a far superior roster in uniform. In the second half, they asserted themselves and overcame a big lead, only to fall into an extended, tight contest due to Indiana’s tenacity.
On Wednesday against New Orleans, they allowed the Pelicans to probe until something clicked. The Wolves have always had trouble matching up with Williamson, who is too quick for center Rudy Gobert and too powerful for their collection of forwards, even the bruising Julius Randle. Consequently, their preoccupation with Williamson drew perimeter defenders away from ball-containment on three-point shooters and, especially in the first half, created numerous layup opportunities on baseline cuts behind defenders focused on Williamson.
Given the attention paid toward him, Williamson still bullied his way to a dozen baskets in 16 attempts, all two-pointers, while doling out eight assists. He has extraordinary finesse and quickness for a player of his size, resulting in a trio of steals. He was, hands down, the game’s MVP.
In his press conference before the New Orleans game Wednesday, Wolves Head Coach Chris Finch took questions on the failures of Monday night against the Pacers. He decried the “focus, energy and effort,” saying, “we’ve been good in those areas lately and we just weren’t (on Monday).
“We need to vary our end-of-games,” he continued. “We can’t rely solely on Ant (Anthony Edwards). That’s one. Two: Decisionmaking. We’ve got to get out of the mentality of trying to hit a home run every single time. It hasn’t worked.
“We looked at all the metrics in close-game situations and we turn it over a little too much, we take hard shots and we miss open shots. We’ve got to reduce home-run shots, take care of the ball (and) invite the defense that we know is coming and use it against them a little more. We do have to be a bit better executing and that is going involve other people (besides Ant) getting involved.”
Specifically, Finch wanted to engage Randle’s playmaking more often in the clutch. “His points-per-touch in the post are incredibly high. He always creates really good looks and still has the opportunity to make tough shots for himself,” the coach gushed. “Then hopefully Ant will be the beneficiary of some of that too, where he can get the ball in space and attack the closeouts and not face (defenses) loading up for heavily challenged shots.”
After the loss, the chalkboard talk was tossed in favor of Finch properly lamenting missed shots – at the rim, behind the arc and from the free throw line. In the final 3:39 of the game, Ant missed three layups driving into traffic with his team down anywhere from one to three points. For the game he was 1 for 9 on two-pointers and didn’t make any of seven attempts in the paint. (He did make 4 of 10 three-pointers, and was 1 for 2 in the clutch, and got to the line 17 times making 1 of 2, after shooting 20 free throws against Indiana.)
The only other clutch shooter was Naz Reid, who missed his own layup at the 4:08 mark of a tie game, then clanked a corner trey in exactly the situation Finch was envisioning – Randle drew through defenders and delivered the pass with him wide open. Through it all, Randle and Naz joined Ant in missing as well as making a free throw – three crucial points gone astray.
But that was less than half the story. The Wolves defense allowed the Pelicans to make 5 of 9 shots, a couple on second-chance opportunities when the Wolves couldn’t garner the rebound. In the five minutes of “clutch,” the Pels outrebounded Minnesota 10-4, generated four assists to the Wolves’ one and performed like the more composed team.
After the game, Ant properly pointed the finger at his team’s inability to get stops. The small sample size distorts things, but the Wolves ceded 133.3 points per 100 possessions in five crunchtime minutes Wednesday (while scoring just 77.8 points per 100 possessions) and collectively gave up 143.3 points per 100 possessions in 15 clutch minutes when you add in the 10 minutes of clutch from the Pacers game on Monday.
For the season, the Wolves rank 18th in clutch time defense, allowing 112.8 points per 100 possessions, and 24th in clutch offense by scoring just 103.8 points per 100 possessions. The net rating of minus 9.0 points is 25th out of the 30 teams.
The sheer number of clutch games – three more than any other team and more than twice as many as Oklahoma City’s 21 – is itself damning. In the 28 games they have played that aren’t close at the end, the Wolves are 22-6. They have the 8th best point differential in the NBA, compiled mostly due to their mastery of the fourth quarter.
The Wolves outscored their opponents in every quarter – by 43 in the first period, by nine in the second, by 48 in the third and by 185 in the fourth (they are minus 1 overall in overtime). What this means is that Minnesota is both a frontrunner, piling up the margin when they have a lead, and a team that can frequently rally from a deficit coming into the final quarter, but usually can’t close out a victory.
In the clutch, they are minus 52.
A team takes on a distinct personality with each new season, one that reveals itself more and more with each passing game. The personality is bound up in character, trust, execution and the ability to coalesce and synergize as the NBA marathon wears on. Everyone is culpable or credited, from President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly through Finch and his coaching staff, into the roster led by the signature star Ant, the respected veterans Gobert and Mike Conley and the core eight-player rotation, including prominent newcomers Randle and Donte DiVincenzo.
I repeat, the strong evidence is that this edition of the Wolves doesn’t believe in itself enough to maximize its obvious collective talent. Their tendency to give flailing teams hope and thus new energy, or to degrade almost every aspect of their play at the time when it is needed most, may at times seem like a death wish. But I think it is closer to a death premonition.
Last season’s Wolves understood its collective capabilities deep in their fiber, and imposed them with brutal efficiency. In terms of raw numbers they weren’t that terrific in the clutch either – outscored by 34 points in 146 minutes over 36 games. But the total number of games was middle of the pack, not league-leading, and the Wolves won 21 of those 36 games. Fans will recall that they took the measure of their foes in the first half ( plus 73 in the first quarter, plus 114 in the second quarter), then routed them in the third quarter, to the tune of plus 262, making the plus 101 of the fourth quarter less of an issue.
The 2023-24 reveled in who they believed themselves to be and demonstrated it with crisp poise. The 2024-25 Wolves are a team too frequently of strain and labor, seeking a flow by continually priming the pump. Their self-belief is shrouded by dread, and with just 11 games to play, they have yet to shake it.
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Britt Robson
Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.
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