Coming close just doesn't cut it

LOS ANGELES -- Crowds streamed toward Staples Center late Monday afternoon cloaked completely in black, their hair dyed and their eyelashes colored to match.

Timberwolves supporters finally dressed appropriately?

Not quite.

    The fans in black arrived for a free Green Day concert outside Staples Center before the Timberwolves lost their 13th consecutive game inside, 91-87 to a Clippers team that finally overcame in the fourth quarter.

The Wolves led after each of the first three quarters Monday, two nights after they had briefly led Portland four minutes into the third quarter and then got outscored 57-27 the rest of the way.

On that night, the Timberwolves, as Al Jefferson put it, couldn't  "score no more" in a third quarter that cost them the game.

On Monday, it was the fourth quarter when they went completely cold, surrendering what once had been an eight-point, third-quarter lead after they went scoreless for nearly five minutes in the middle of the final quarter.

This time, traveling violations, an illegal screen and missed shot after missed shot was their doom against the Clippers, who upset Denver at home on Friday night and on Monday did just enough to win when they outscored the Wolves 6-0 in that five-minute stretch and then held on until the end.

The Wolves committed seven of their 21 turnovers in the fourth quarter alone.

"It's something that has plagued us as a basketball team," Wolves coach Kurt Rambis said. "We become willful. We try to do too much on our own. Our ball movement stops. Our execution becomes very, very sloppy -- in a lot of cases, non existant -- because players are trying to do things individually. And that's when we get into trouble as a ballclub.

"It's something we've done as a ballclub in the past that we're working on correcting and learning from. It's youth and inexperience."

They fought back from an 85-77 deficit with fewer than six minutes left and trailed 89-87 with less than a minute to play. But Al Jefferson was called for traveling for the third time in the quarter with 29 seconds left and then Baron Davis made his only shot all night -- after missing his first nine shots -- on a driving layup that preserved the victory with 8.5 seconds left.

Before the game, Rambis said, "It's not just one thing" that has been costing his teams game and he went on to list about a dozen different mistakes they make, many of which they committed in Monday's fourth quarter.

"I'm pretty sure I don't know all the 12 things," Wolves rookie guard Jonny Flynn said, "but it's probably everything during the course of a basketball that we're doing wrong. We played well tonight, except for about those five minutes."

Forward Al Thornton, who the Clippers selected seven slots after the Wolves took Corey Brewer in the 2007 draft, led Los Angeles with 31 points.

Flynn led the Wolves with 17.

The Wolves now are 1-13 after coming from 16 points behind with fewer than seven minutes left to beat New Jersey on opening night.

That was 28 days ago now.

That 1-13 record matches the worst start in franchise history, first reached in the 1994-95 season when the team's future was built around J.R. Rider and Christian Laettner before Kevin Garnett arrived in the draft the next summer.

They also are now three more losses away from tying the franchise record for longest losing streak.

The Wolves lost 16 consecutive games in the 1991-92 season, then did it in 1993-94, back when they were still considered an expansion franchise.

"It's definitely a hard process," Flynn said about a young team trying to learn how to win, "because I hate losing."

Eleven months ago, Sebastian Telfair returned home to New York City and walked out of Madison Square Garden after leading the Timberwolves almost single-handedly to a victory that ended a 13-game losing streak.

On Monday, Telfair didn't exactly go home again.

But he did help beat his former team with a 17-point performance off the bench that included consecutive baskets that started the Clippers on a fourth quarter when they were just good enough while Davis struggled all night until the final seconds.

The Wolves traded Telfair, Craig Smith and Mark Madsen last summer for Quentin Richardson's contract in a deal that opened roster spots and cleared salary-cap space after David Kahn drafted point guards Ricky Rubio and Flynn consecutively in the June draft.

"It means a lot," Telfair said of Monday's victory. "I was traded for them to go get some new guards. I want to show I could play. I don't want to say anybody made a mistake. Those guys are great players. I'm confident enough to know I'm just as good as those guys."