Coach sends Wolves back to the videotape

The Timberwolves were scheduled to practice Friday at noon. But that didn't happen.

Instead, with a 3 p.m. flight scheduled for Oklahoma City, coach Tom Thibodeau sat his team down and they watched film. Lots of film. Nearly two hours of film. Tyus Jones said he couldn't remember a longer film session.

Said Nemanja Bjelica: "We saw a lot of things.''

Much of it must have been painful. The Wolves are off to a 1-3 start. In each of the three losses the team got out to big first-half leads — 15 or more points — only to be sabotaged by disastrous third quarters.

Thibodeau, meanwhile, is using every method at hand trying to change that. And that includes some verbal prodding. After a loss at Sacramento, he called the third quarter — when the Wolves were outscored 31-12 after being outscored 26-16 in that quarter of a season-opening loss at Memphis — an abomination and questioned his team's toughness.

After Thursday's loss in which the Wolves were outscored 33-14 in the third quarter, Thibodeau at least obliquely seemed to question his team's commitment to preparation when he was asked if Karl-Anthony Towns was feeling pressure from preseason hype.

"You have to have a discipline in how you prepare and understand what goes into winning," Thibodeau said. "And everyone is capable of doing that, and not get sidetracked with all the stuff that goes on in this league. … That's why hopefully you're building the right habits, and understanding how you prepare each night, and readiness is huge. The locker rooms I've been in where you have winning teams, big winning teams, they're talking basketball. They're not talking all the other stuff. They're talking about what's going to happen in the game. And that's got to be our mind-set.''

Asked about that after Friday's film session, Thibodeau didn't backtrack. But he didn't go any further either.

"Getting ready to play is something you can't start the day of the game,'' he said. "It has to begin earlier. You have to know your opponent well, you have to know all the players. You have to know their system, you have to know our system. Preparation is not something you can turn on or off.''

The team must be doing something right in its preparation, considering the way the team has opened games. The Wolves have had a double-figure lead in the first quarter of all four games. When it comes to the first quarter, the Wolves are leading the league in scoring (33.0), offensive rating (132) and shooting (60.0 percent).

But the third quarter? In three losses the Wolves have been outscored 90-42 in the third, shooting just 30 percent and getting outrebounded, and they have been bested 21-2 in second-chance points. They outscored Memphis 35-23 in the third quarter of their lone victory.

"There are some mistakes that are being repeated," Thibodeau said. "So we have to look at how we eliminate that. Are we learning? There are different ways to learn. Obviously preparation is important, listening is important, watching is important. Studying. And, of course, trial and error. Hopefully we'll improve. In some ways we have. We've started games well, we've had big leads. But we haven't been able to sustain it. We have to take a hard look at that.''

"The good thing is, from every game, we can learn something," Bjelica said. "Everybody makes mistakes, but we cannot repeat some {bad] plays, like yesterday. Easy turnovers, things like that we can control.''