Takeaways: Lackadaisical Timberwolves pummeled by Clippers 115-96

The Timberwolves look broken.

Broken from a basketball perspective and broken in terms of their spirit.

The Wolves just don’t look like they enjoy playing basketball, and that has been the case for much of the last six weeks. Each time it looks like they snap out of a funk, they go right back in one. It’s not just that they are losing, it’s how they look doing it: lifeless, little energy, little desire to find a solution to their problems.

As the season goes along, it’s getting harder to write off these lulls as one off moments that happen to every team in the league, and think they are more indicative of character traits the Wolves possess. They are moody and emotional, by their admission, but they too often fail to channel that properly on the floor.

That’s how you get results like a bad loss to the Pelicans and how you get the follow-up, a 115-96 loss to the Clippers on Sunday, Feb. 8, at Target Center that was an eyesore in every way imaginable. The Wolves tried to stay upbeat in their public comments amid a quiet locker room.

“I feel like we had good energy today. I just feel like the offense wasn’t going for us, especially myself,” Anthony Edwards said. “I have nothing to say about our defense tonight. I think we did a pretty good job tonight. We just couldn’t score the ball.”

Their two best players, Edwards and Julius Randle, didn’t have it, two nights after Rudy Gobert appeared to call them and the rest of his teammates out for a lack of effort on defense. The Wolves lost for the third time in four games following a four-game winning streak that followed a five-game losing streak.

Jaden McDaniels, who had been playing some of his best basketball entering this homestand, had just two points while Donte DiVincenzo had one point on three shot attempts.

Their outputs are a stark indicator at the lack of ball movement the Wolves have now, since they thrive off that. As coach Chris Finch said after the game, the Wolves have “lost their structure” on offense.

“We [previously] lost five in a row so I think the energy right now feels like we lost five in a row and it’s been two in a row,” DiVincenzo said. “I think they’re just bad losses.”

The kneejerk reaction from a frustrated fanbase is to ask for a change at head coach, but Wolves President Tim Connelly isn’t the kind of executive to make based on the emotional highs and lows of the season, preferring to take in a larger body of work when evaluating the franchise. It was just two days earlier that he said the Wolves had a “puncher’s chance” of winning a title.

Since then, the Wolves have made that comment look like a pipe dream with how they’ve played. Finch, as he did after a blowout loss in Atlanta on Dec. 31, took a positive tone when you might have expected a more negative one.

Fans were making their way for the exits to get an early start on Super Bowl plans as the Clippers took a 26-point lead in the fourth. How do the Wolves get out of this latest malaise?

“We just come to work,” Randle said. “Put one foot in front of the other and we know we can do it. Ain’t that much that need to be said.”

The players who spoke after the game said the Wolves have done a good job of navigating these tough times of the season as a group, even after Gobert poured on some candid thoughts after Friday’s loss.

“I think we talk to each other. We’re pretty good with that,” Edwards said.

Added Randle: “It’s been good. We respond, like I said, pretty well, not really much that’s said, but we understand as a team what we need to do.”

BOXSCORE: L.A. Clippers 115, Wolves 96

NBA standings

The Wolves foretold their first half from the jump, after they fell behind 10-2 with three turnovers. The numbers, especially for the starters, were not great in the first 24 minutes. Edwards was 3-for-11, 0-for-6 from three-point range with four turnovers. The bench produced 19 of the team’s 42 first-half points. The starters were a combined 10-for-28 and the team had 14 turnovers. On the other end, Leonard 24 points, one more than the Wolves starters combined (23).