Playing 'stupid,' Wolves let Sixers get first win after 0-17 start

Nobody wanted to be that team.

One Wolves player after another said it. Quietly, in a somber postgame locker room. Nobody wanted to be a footnote to history. Nobody wanted to be that team.

But that's what Minnesota is.

In a listless performance that coach Flip Saunders said pushed the team back to square one, the Wolves struggled on offense, had game-killing lapses on defense and ultimately fell to the previously winless Philadelphia 76ers 85-77 at Target Center on Wednesday night.

Philadelphia came to Minnesota as the fourth NBA team in history to start a season 0-17. It left falling one game short of the New Jersey Nets' 0-18 start in the 2009-10 season.

"What I was disappointed about was the sense of urgency," Saunders said, meaning the lack of it. "We'll have to address it. There's not really much to say about that. Our sense of urgency wasn't there.''

The Wolves (4-13) set season lows in shooting percentage (35.7 percent) and in total points. They shot 3-for-17 on three-pointers and looked, at times, completely unprepared on offense.

"They play that bad and we still lose?" Corey Brewer said. "We have to look at ourselves, man. It's tough. We can't lose this game, period, no matter how you look at it.''

The Wolves trailed by 10 after a quarter but used a 21-9 second quarter to take a 34-32 halftime lead. A back-and-forth second half saw the Wolves use an 11-2 run to take a 75-73 lead on Mo Williams' three-pointer with 2:17 left in the game.

It all went downhill from there. The 76ers finished the game on a 12-2 run; K.J. McDaniels answered Williams' three-pointer, Michael Carter-Williams drove for a score. Moments later Robert Covington hit his third three-pointer of the quarter and the game was essentially over.

"What happens is we played stupid," Saunders said. "We've been trying to break that habit of gambling. And we get up and we take two gambles and they score two threes out of our gambles. Hey, we're not a very good team right now."

Williams, playing with a bad back, scored 14 points. Gorgui Dieng had 15 points and 16 rebounds. Thaddeus Young had 16 points, and Andrew Wiggins had 11.

"It's tough to take a loss from a team that hasn't won any games," said Young, who played for the 76ers last season. "You don't want to be that team, and we were that team."

Said Wiggins: "That's going to be on everyone's mind for a long time."

Saunders hopes so. With a very difficult stretch coming up, the Wolves coach admitted that things might get uglier before they get better. Despite injuries that have limited his options, he pledged to make players sit for making mistakes — something, clearly, that happened to Anthony Bennett on Wednesday. "We have to get through to them that they have to play the right way," Saunders said.

So is there a silver lining? Can a loss like this open some eyes to what it takes to win?

"We'll see starting [Thursday] at 12 o'clock," Saunders said, referring to the team's scheduled practice. "I'd like to do some stuff I used to do in college," Saunders continued. "I don't know if I can do that in the NBA. I'll think about it tonight."