In his five seasons with the Timberwolves, Anthony Edwards never talked publicly the way he did Wednesday after the team’s 115-104 loss to the Kings.
As the media waited for him at his locker following the game, Edwards asked, “What you wanna know, why we’re trash?”
Yes, that’s what all Wolves fans would like to know after the team’s fourth consecutive loss and seventh in nine games. The Wolves climbed out of another double-digit hole Wednesday and seemed like they had everything figured out after taking a 12-point lead with 7 minutes, 17 seconds to play. Then it all went away in a flash, as Malik Monk (27 points) and De’Aaron Fox (26 points) took advantage of a porous Wolves defense, one that hasn’t shown up in a lot of big moments this season. Then questionable offense and shot taking, including from Edwards, doomed the Wolves. Fans let out a few boos throughout the evening.
After lamenting this loss — “I’ma take this one,” he said — Edwards got at the larger issues on his mind. First, he accused the team of being “front-runners” Wednesday.
“I don’t like frontrunners,” he said. “Myself, I’m not a front-runner. I hate to have front-runners or to think we have front-runners on the team. I don’t think we have any of those. It look like we was front-runners tonight, 100 percent.”
Then he added: “We was down, nobody wanted to say nothing. We got up and everybody cheering. … We get down again and don’t nobody say nothing. That’s the definition of a front-runner. We as a team, including myself, we all was front-runners tonight.”
Later in his comments, Edwards got to the macro problems plaguing this team through an 8-10 start, and he made some of the most damning statements he has made about any of his five Wolves teams. He wasn’t angry or raised his voice. He was contemplative and reflective, searching for answers.
“However many of us it is, all 15, we go into our own shell and we’re just growing away from each other. It’s obvious,” Edwards said. “We can see it. I can see it, the team can see it, the coaches can see it. The fans … booing us. That … is crazy, man. We’re getting booed in our home arena.”