Karl-Anthony Towns paced back and forth off to the side of the Timberwolves bench in the waning moments of Minnesota's 125-116 loss to Phoenix on Wednesday night.
Timberwolves handle Phoenix for three quarters, then unravel
The league-best Suns outscored the Wolves 42-28 in the final period in an emotional, technical-filled battle.
March 24, 2022 at 4:24AM
He raised his head, bit his lower lip like he was keeping himself from yelling to the Target Center rafters.
Moments before, Towns' good friend and former Kentucky teammate Devin Booker was strutting around the court, talking his talk as the Suns, who hadn't led in the first three quarters, buried the Wolves with a 42-point fourth quarter.
For better or worse, the Wolves would wear their emotions on their sleeves, if their jerseys had any. They will chirp at opponents and officials, and there was plenty of that on a night that featured six technical and two flagrant fouls.
But when you dish it out, sometimes you have to take it, too, and the Western Conference champions, even without Chris Paul, taught the Wolves a lesson in what it's like to play playoff-caliber basketball.
"They just killed our defense. That was it," said Anthony Edwards, who had 19 points.
Edwards said the Suns plummeted the Wolves' "high-wall" defense in the fourth and managed to put the Wolves in impossible spots, and almost everyone did damage to them. Deandre Ayton finished with 35 points and 14 rebounds. Booker had 28 while Landry Shamet nailed five three-pointers for 19 points.
Towns had 15 points, but only three in the second half as he battled foul trouble. Towns picked up his fifth foul, a flagrant foul for nailing Shamet in the head as he was driving to the hoop, at the 8 minute, 35 second mark of the fourth.
"I think the turning point was the flagrant in the fourth," Towns said. "I think that changed the game, unfortunately."
Towns' comment underscored that for the second straight game, the Wolves let the officials defeat them, too. Towns, Patrick Beverley, Jarred Vanderbilt and coach Chris Finch all picked up technicals while Ayton and Jae Crowder did so for Phoenix.
"It's just a rodeo every single night," Finch said when asked about the officiating. "I have no idea. Just try to navigate a lot of things out there."
One team was able to set aside its issues with the officiating, and Phoenix's thorough demolition of the Wolves in the fourth made it a non-issue in the final result.
"We let the refs kind of get into controlling the adversity," said D'Angelo Russell, who scored just six points. "We fall into it. Earlier in the season I would say more than anything. Now we're playing hard, scrappy and trying to deliver the first blow and the quick whistles are stopping us from being like that. We got to have a balance."
No amount of favorable officiating was going to help the Wolves' leaky defense in the fourth. The Wolves stayed in the game just fine without Towns until he checked back in with 5:29 remaining. The Wolves were down just 104-103. But Phoenix scored 14 of the next 17 points as Booker got rolling — and let the fans and his opponents know about it. Russell was impressed with how "tight" Phoenix played.
"Their schemes, everything they do has a purpose to it," Russell said. "You watch League Pass and you see the teams that don't have that. It's somewhere you want to be."
The Wolves have lost two straight and fell further back in their quest to avoid the play-in tournament. Dallas and Phoenix showed them what it takes to win close games against good teams in the fourth quarter. The Wolves have to hope they were paying attention.
"We're fighting for that spot and that spot is not getting any easier for us coming down the stretch …" Towns said. "We got to figure it out."
The players communicated through a group text chain to pull themselves out of a four-game losing streak. But the thread is used for other ways to bond and build camaraderie.
