Eight games into a season is no time to panic, but the stuck-in-the-mud look of the heralded starting five of the Minnesota Timberwolves is cause for concern.
At 4-4, the Wolves haven’t met expectations that came with mortgaging the future for Rudy Gobert. Charles Barkley, after Minnesota’s loss to Phoenix Tuesday night, said starting two 7-footers – Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns – won’t work because it makes it too hard to guard the 3. He noted that the West goes through 3-point shooting teams like the Suns, Warriors and Clippers.
It was after the 116-107 loss to the Suns, who drilled seventeen 3s, that Anthony Edwards realized how badly the Suns’ starting five outplayed Minnesota’s starting five.
“Our starting five was all negative,” Edwards said, interrupting Jordan McLaughlin as he looked at the plus-minus numbers in the box score.
“From the looks of it, it’s telling me that when we’re (starters) in the game we’re losing and when they’re (bench players) in the game we got a better chance of winning. I don’t like the sound of that so we’re going to figure it out. That’s crazy.”
The moment Anthony Edwards realized the starting lineup is currently hurting the Timberwolves pic.twitter.com/YVYo0Cw76J
— Jace frederick (@JaceFrederick) November 2, 2022
There was no better example of Minnesota’s starters getting killed by Suns starters than in the fourth quarter, when a close game turned into a blowout in the blink of an eye.
Edwards checked into the game with 10:12 left in the fourth quarter when the Wolves down 87-77. After back-to-back threes by Edwards cut the deficit to 87-85, Edwards pounded his chest as the Suns called timeout to get their starters back in the game.
Out went Cameron Payne, Landry Shamet, Damion Lee, Torrey Craig and Jock Landale, and in came Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson and Bismack Biyombo (Deandre Ayton didn’t play).
What happened from then on was a disaster.
Minnesota had seven possessions in a three-minute stretch from 8:35 to 5:35 and six of them were turnovers. Edwards and Russell each had two, Towns had one and the other was a shot clock violation immediately after a timeout.
Phoenix grew the lead to eight points in that stretch and then surged to a 14-point lead that allowed them to shut down the engine and coast to victory.
The barrage of turnovers is a symptom of the way Minnesota’s starters have played most of the season. Asked how the starting five are gelling, head coach Chris Finch said: “There hasn’t really been a whole lot of growth with that unit just yet.”
Finch expanded on the offensive issues Wednesday morning.
“We haven’t been able to find or sustain when we do find a consistent rhythm on our offense,” Finch said on KFAN radio, acknowledging that everyone in the lineup is learning how to play with Gobert.
“Offensively, we’re behind where I thought we would be. I thought we’d be a little further ahead. When I start looking at it, we dropped a big stone in a puddle and we’ve got some big ripples right now,” he continued. “We need to keep working on it and figuring out some new concepts that are probably going to put our players in slightly better positions than we have been putting them in.”
Minnesota isn’t the only team in the West off to a slower-than-expected start. The Warriors are 3-5, the Clippers are 3-4, the Mavericks are 3-3 and the Grizzlies are only 4-3. It’s like the West is flipped upside down with Portland (5-1), Utah (6-2) and San Antonio (5-2) all near the top of the conference.
“No one’s going to win an NBA championship in October or November or even December. It just doesn’t happen. The teams that are playing well now are these teams that are full of hard-playing vets, maybe without stars, or hard-playing vets around a team with one star, like a Dallas or a Memphis. Everybody else is figuring it out,” Finch said.
“The teams we’ve lost to have a combined 17-5 record. Nobody expected that Utah and San Antonio would be out of the gates playing so well.”
Related: Barkley ‘hated’ Gobert trade, calls Timberwolves ‘idiots’
