Early struggles doom Wolves against Oklahoma City

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

That astounding truth might never have been more evident than during a 48-hour span just completed by the Timberwolves, one in which they on Wednesday smothered a Portland team that had won 14 of its past 15 games and were trounced 111-92 Friday by an Oklahoma City team that's now both healthy and desperate.

If this was a test of maturity for how a young team handles just a little success, well ….

"Our main focus for two days was using the Portland game as a springboard," Wolves coach Flip Saunders said, "and evidently we didn't have any springs in the board because we didn't do that."

Saunders remarked how some of the team's injured players noticed before the game that their healthy teammates seemed, well, perhaps satisfied by beating a Blazers team by eight points just two nights before.

"When the game started, we didn't have that edge," Saunders said, "and they pretty much mauled us."

Fresh off Thursday's home victory over a LeBron James-less Cleveland team, a Thunder team that played stars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in back-to-back games for the first time this season led from start to finish. That included leads of 6-0, 24-9 and 39-17 before the first quarter ended as well as a 24-point, third-quarter lead before the Wolves reduced the deficit to as few as 11 points with eight minutes remaining.

Former UCLA guards Westbrook and Wolves rookie Zach LaVine met in an NBA regular-season game for the first time and Westbrook delivered a focused, decisive 34-point, six-assist, six-rebound performance on a night when Durant (16 points, five assists) was placed on a 30-minute playing-time limit in his seventh game back from a fractured foot.

"He's good, explosive," LaVine said about Westbrook, after whom he has modeled part of his game. "He did everything, man. He's a superstar. He did what we had to do."

That was one positional matchup that tilted the playing field heavily in the Thunder's favor.

"The first half I think Zach thought he was playing at Pauley Pavilion in the summertime because he was going to go one-on-one against Westbrook," Saunders said. "He didn't do the job I'd like to see him do getting us in our offense."

The Wolves won the third quarter 28-23, but by the time Saunders finally found combinations — featuring Andrew Wiggins and Shabazz Muhammad (18 points each) together — that reduced the deficit to 11 points, it was far too late.

"I was happy we finally competed," Saunders said, "but it took us a long time to compete, which was disappointing."

Not so for a Thunder team that started the season 3-12 with its two superstars essentially sidelined and now must probably win at a 70 percent clip just to get back to an eighth and final playoff spot in the ultracompetitive Western Conference.

"We talked about it," Durant said when asked about his team needing the kind of fast start Friday that the Blazers didn't get Wednesday. "We've seen Portland come in here and relax a little bit and [the Wolves] hit them in the mouth."

The Wolves were the ones bleeding Friday, just 48 hours after they had beaten the Blazers and 24 hours after Saunders had watched former Thunder star James Harden score 44 points for Houston in a victory at Sacramento in the late TNT game.

"I told our guys there's only one thing I was happy about," Saunders said. "I was happy they didn't have Harden on their team. I looked at Harden and the way he played last night … if that team had Harden with Durant and Westbrook, that is a Big Three. But they're going to get it going."