Where do they go from here?
Game 4 will test the resilience of the Timberwolves
The Wolves have taken pride in their ability to bounce back from losses all season. They've never had to rebound from one quite like Thursday's collapse.
April 23, 2022 at 4:40AM
All season, the Timberwolves have been proud of the fact that they can move on quickly from a loss, that they don't let one bad night bleed into the next game.
Saturday's Game 4 will test their mettle like no other loss as they attempt to rebound from a Game 3 collapse that tied for the fourth-largest blown lead (26 points) in NBA postseason history.
The Memphis Grizzlies' 104-95 victory at Target Center gave them a 2-1 lead in the Western Conference first-round playoff series.
The Wolves' attempt to turn things around began shortly after Thursday's calamity, when the two of the team's leaders, coach Chris Finch and point guard Patrick Beverley, came out with a forward-looking, upbeat attitude that ran counter to the anger and disappointment emanating from the fan base.
"We created two big leads," Finch said. "We've just got to hold them."
That was underselling it. But it reflected how the Wolves were trying to look at what happened Thursday — take the good with the bad and remember there was a reason you built 26 and 25-point leads in the first place.
"It's easy to go in the locker rooms … and point fingers," Beverley said. "But this team is not like that at all. Camaraderie, staying together, enjoying adversity. No one said it was going to be easy. We don't want it to be easy. We want it to be extremely hard and it was. Again, this is a playoff loss, but it's a lot we can learn from here, and we will."
It's just a matter of perspective. Can they learn something in the 24 hours after the loss, or will they ultimately learn something about themselves in that moment from a big-picture point of view, a perspective that might only come with time?
One thing the Wolves have yet to learn is how to combat the type of defense teams are using to limit Karl-Anthony Towns and still get him in the flow of the game.
The Clippers took him out of the play-in game last week by using smaller players and doubling Towns, and the Grizzlies altered their starting lineup to do the same in Game 3. The Wolves found success playing off Towns in the first and third quarters, but Towns was never engaged in the game both because of his own foul trouble and the fact that he never got involved in the scoring, with just four shot attempts.
"Remember what got us here, for me at least, remember what got me here, what got us here," Towns said. "Our support systems, our work and each other. We just got to lean on that."
To get back in the series, the Wolves can try to lean on the things they did right for so much of Thursday night that got them their big leads in the first place.
Specifically, they can look back at the job they did against Ja Morant. Morant got a triple-double but needed 18 shot attempts to get 16 points, and the Wolves forced him into seven turnovers. If they can replicate that, they stand a chance of getting back in the series.
But will they have the desire it takes to put in the extra effort to play that type of defense, the swarming, rotational defense they played so well in the first and third quarters? Or did the second and fourth quarters just kill their competitive spirit, and will the next two games just be practice for Memphis to tune up for the next round?
The Wolves have said all along this team is different from past iterations of the franchise. They can show if they really are.
"We're in the playoffs now. Nobody is going to change," guard D'Angelo Russell said. "You pretty much are who you are. It's all about the mentality."
The Spurs continue to miss a number of players, as well as their coach.
