The Minnesota Timberwolves were considered genuine championship contenders heading into this season.
The once high-flying T-Wolves, led by irrepressible superstar Anthony Edwards, reached the Western Conference Finals last season but have lost four in a row and seven of their last nine after starting 6-3 to start the new campaign.
The latest nadir came on Wednesday night after suffering a 114-105 loss to the Sacramento Kings.
Minnesota led by 12 points with just over seven minutes remaining but fell apart down the stretch and now they’re two games under .500 at 8-10.
Blowing leads has been a theme of their season, something head coach Chris Finch described as “Groundhog Day.”
The night before his team held a five point lead over the Rockets with just over three minutes to go before losing in overtime.
Less than a week ago, Edwards had to intervene after a frustrated Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert openly beefed in a game against the Raptors.
The Wolves’ season is slowly unravelling, and after the game against the Kings the brash and outspoken Ant-Man went off on his teammates, offering a scathing assessment of where this team is currently at.
“I think it’s we soft as (heck) as a team, internally,” a disgruntled Edwards said. “Not to the other team, but internally, we soft. We can’t talk to each other. Just a bunch of little kids. Just like we playing with a bunch of little kids. Everybody, the whole team. We just can’t talk to each other. And we’ve got to figure it out, because we can’t go down this road.”
“We look like frontrunners for sure tonight,” Edwards added.
“We was down, nobody wanted to say nothing. We got up, and everybody [was] cheering and [hyped up]. We get down again, and don’t nobody says nothing. That’s the definition of a frontrunner. We as a team, including myself, we all was frontrunners tonight.”
“We’ve been trying to figure this out for the whole year. We thought defense was our identity.
“Everybody right now is on different agendas,” he added. “I think that’s one of the main culprits of why we’re losing.”
Fans caught wind of Edwards’ unfiltered comments and all reached the same verdict: trading Karl-Anthony Towns and essentially blowing up a team on the ascendancy was a big mistake.
“That’s what happens when the management breaks the team apart a year after a successful playoff run. Wolves shouldn’t have traded their real locker room leader, Karl Anthony Towns,” wrote on fan on X.
“Shouldn’t have traded KAT,” added another.
“Think they would like a do over on the KAT trade?” a third posted.
“KAT is a confirmed superstar glue guy,” a fourth shared.
KAT had his fair share of critics in Minnesota, but he was a captain and well-liked member of a Timberwolves franchise who drafted him with the No. 1 pick back in 2015.
Chemistry matters when roster building, especially when it comes to building title contenders. Towns had his faults, like all players, but he was an integral part of a team that was on the precipice of last season’s Finals.
To blow that up in the offseason was odd, even it it meant shedding long-term money.
Minnesota were always going to take a hit on their offense because of it, but the trade has also seem them slip from the league’s best-rated defense to the 12th.
The Timberwolves’ cost-cutting exercise is evidently not working out, and to make matter worse, Randle and guard Donte DiVincenzo, who were acquired as part of the trade that sent KAT to New York three weeks before the season, have blown hot and cold.
Meanwhile, KAT has settled well into life in The Big Apple, dropping 55 points over his last two games for a Knicks team currently fourth in the Eastern Conference.
The trade has clearly had an adverse effect on the Timberwolves’ locker room and chemistry, although Edwards maintains it isn’t just about the new guys.
“I’m talking about the whole team,” Edwards said. “However many of us it is, all 15, we go into our own shell and we’re just growing away from each other. It’s obvious. We can see it. I can see it, the team can see it, the coaches can see it.”
The Wolves need to figure things out, and quickly.
Their home crowd has been booing them of later but they have a chance to turn the tide when they host the Los Angeles Clippers in an NBA Cup group-play game on Friday night.