Timberwolves' offense lacked flow with Naz Reid out, Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards struggling

One of the players who most typifies how Timberwolves coach Chris Finch prefers to run his offense won't be with the team for at least several weeks, if at all again this season.

Naz Reid, out indefinitely because of a broken left wrist, played offense at a fast pace. Whatever Reid did, he usually did it quickly. It might not have always worked, but he played fast. He would run up and decide if he was going to set or slip a screen in fractions of a second. When he got the ball, he was usually decisive about what he was going to do with it.

The Wolves offense in their 123-111 loss to the Lakers on Friday looked like it could use a lot of what Reid had been contributing to it, especially lately, when he averaged 18.1 points over his previous eight games. The Wolves shot a putrid 32% in the second half vs. Los Angeles.

Finch started using favored words and terms he hadn't used in a while to describe his team's performance: It lacked "flow" and the ball got "sticky," meaning there was little to no ball movement.

"We're just not playing out of any concepts or any flow," Finch said. "That's when we're best. Get caught calling too many plays right now, trying to direct the offense this way, that way, get somebody going who hasn't been going."

Calling plays might be one suggestion fans have for Finch to kick-start the offense, but that's not how he prefers the offense to run. He prefers less play calling and more of a freewheeling offense with set principles for the players to run. There was too much dependency on the sets Friday.

"Sometimes you got to get yourself going. You got to get an offensive rebound, get something in transition. You got to make a cut, get ot the free-throw line and play with more force," Finch said. "I think tonight I was just as guilty of it, trying to get these guys going, and the guys that had it going early were the guys that were playing in the flow."

It was not the best night for the Wolves' top offensive threats, Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards. Edwards, who is battling an illness plaguing the Wolves and a sprained ankle he is playing through, shot only 4-for-16. His various maladies had an effect on that in addition to the team's overall performance.

Towns had it going for a little bit in the second quarter, when he reeled off 10 consecutive points, but the rest of the night was a struggle. Towns seemed frustrated after the game but didn't go into specifics of what was giving him fits, though he did mention earlier the Wolves needed to take better advantage of matchups on the floor.

"I got a lot of things to say tomorrow at practice," Towns said Friday after the game. "I'm gonna go in there and do what I gotta do, speak up for our team. I know the words I say will help us win games. So I'm just trying to do that. That's all I'm gonna say. Keep it in the locker room."

The Wolves ended up not having practice Saturday ahead of Sunday's game against Portland. Part of the clunkiness has included trying to get Towns back up to speed in the offense after his prolonged injury absence, with point guard Mike Conley saying the two of them were talking things through after the game. Conley said how the Wolves are running the offense has changed with Towns back in the fold. Finch said the Wolves might be forcing him the ball too much.

"Having him back in the mix and him implementing into what we're already doing is, I wouldn't say challenging, but it's the obstacle that we're trying to [overcome]," Conley said. "How can we get us to space the floor properly. How can we cut? What plays? Plays change when you bring a guy like KAT in. Stuff that we run for him now as opposed to we weren't running those plays before, so it's just finding the balance."

Conley said the Wolves aren't in "panic mode," especially because they aren't at full health, and the team has played some good basketball of late, even on offense. The Wolves need to recapture what they had.

"We got to be aware of each other," center Rudy Gobert said. "We got to be willing to do the things for each other without the ball, whether it's spacing, whether it's screening, running the floor. We've done it at times."