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MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Timberwolves still had a glimmer of hope Wednesday night during a slog of a game when Julius Randle stepped to the free-throw line to try to complete a three-point play. Randle missed the free throw that would have pulled the Wolves to within five.
The injury-ravaged Memphis Grizzlies gave the ball right back to the Wolves when they lost the rebound out of bounds. Chris Finch drew up a play that got Naz Reid a clean look from the corner that could have cut it to two. But Randle’s pass was so hot that it zipped through Reid’s hands and jammed one of his fingers.
It was the capper to an uncharacteristically rough night for Randle, who has been Minnesota’s most consistent player this season. His final line wasn’t terrible — 21 points, five rebounds, three assists and three turnovers in a 116-110 loss. But he needed 21 shots to get those 21 points, thanks in large part to a 2-of-10 first quarter. That final turnover was charged to Reid, though it probably should have gone to Randle. The Wolves were outscored by seven points in the 35 minutes he was on the floor, the fourth-worst mark for him in a game this season.
Randle is off to an All-Star-caliber start to this season. You can count on three fingers the number of bad games he has played, adding this one to a win at Dallas on Nov. 17 and a loss in Oklahoma City on Nov. 26. The timing for this one wasn’t great. The Wolves were missing Anthony Edwards (right foot) for the third straight game, and the 3-pointers weren’t falling against a Grizzlies team missing eight players, including Ja Morant, Zach Edey and Cam Spencer.
They needed Randle to be at his bully-ball best against the ultra-physical Grizzlies. But Memphis grinded the Wolves’ offense down in the second half, reducing it to isolation ball. Randle tried to go at former Defensive Player of the Year Jaren Jackson Jr. over and over again, coming up empty far more often than not.
“I felt like there wasn’t as much movement on my part, on everybody’s part,” Randle said. “I gotta be better, and I will be. I’m not too worried about it.”
The Timberwolves (17-10) lost for just the second time in the last nine games, but this one was entirely avoidable, and certainly not solely on Randle’s broad shoulders. The Wolves shot 40 percent from the field, including a ghastly 29.5 percent from deep. After starting the game hitting 11 of their first 25 3s, they missed 17 of their next 18 3s to kick away a nine-point lead. Randle was 1 of 6 from 3, Reid was 3 of 11 and Bones Hyland was 2 of 9.
They turned the ball over 17 times, leading to 20 points for the Grizzlies, and missed nine free throws in a six-point loss.
“I thought it was a horrendous night offensively,” Finch said. “Our offensive decision-making was awful. From shot selection to turnovers to execution, it was just not very good.”
Finch also couldn’t find the right buttons to push to unclog the offense in the second half, and the bench had a disastrous stint in the second half. It all added up to one of the most disappointing losses of the season.
“I think it was just the effect of missing good looks and then trying to create something that wasn’t there,” Randle said. “We just kind of got in a bad rhythm from there.”
Finch’s lament
The head coach has been encouraged by the team’s offensive performance since losing Edwards to a foot injury. The Wolves had been leaning into ball movement, cutting and transition without their biggest star, putting up 127 points in a win at Golden State last week and 117 in beating Sacramento on Sunday.
The offense was moving at a good clip in the first half on Wednesday night. The Wolves put up 62 points, shot 41 percent from 3 and racked up 18 assists on 24 made baskets.
The Grizzlies started pushing back in the second half, using their size and strength to muscle the Wolves off their spots. All the ball and player movement slowed down considerably. They had only eight assists in the second half and went 4 of 22 from deep.
To Finch’s point about decision-making, the offense far too often tried to challenge Jackson’s prowess in the paint, and he responded with three blocked shots and a handful of forced, off-balance shots that never had a chance.
Jaden McDaniels took only three shots in the first half and 11 for the game. Rudy Gobert, who had 16 points and 16 rebounds, had only one field-goal attempt in the second half.
“I gotta do a better job of getting us organized and calling plays,” Finch said.
Calling a lot of plays is not Finch’s preferred coaching style. He wants his players flowing into offense and instinctively reacting to what is in front of them because he believes that is the most difficult offense to guard. But on a night when no one could make a 3 and Randle seemed hellbent on challenging Jackson, Finch needed to be more intentional about directing the ball to better matchups.
One of the reasons he was reluctant to do it, he said, was in part because the Wolves’ defense was playing well. They held Memphis to 40 percent shooting and forced 10 turnovers in the second half.
“We were getting stops, so I thought we’d get out and transition and we’d be able to flow into something,” he said. “But we never really did. So then we try to mix in some play calls coming down the stretch, but try not to if we have a kind of any momentum on the push.”
Bench struggles
Even with so many players out of the lineup, the Grizzlies looked like the much deeper team Wednesday night, which is a big problem. Memphis’bench outscored Minnesota’s 44-29. Jock Landale had 20 points and hit four 3s; Kentavious Caldwell-Pope scored 12. But it was more than just scoring. Vince Williams Jr. was a plus-21, Landale a plus-19, KCP a plus-13 and Olivier-Maxence Prosper a plus-12 in 15 minutes.
On the flip side, Reid had 16 points and seven rebounds, but was just 6 of 16 from the floor. Rob Dillingham had five points and three turnovers and was a minus-13 in 11 minutes. Terrence Shannon Jr. had six points and only one rebound in 11 minutes.
Dillingham and Shannon played well in their first shift in the first half, but the bottom fell out in the third quarter. Dillingham entered the game with the Wolves up eight, and they were outscored 20-7 for the rest of the quarter.
For much of the season, the Wolves’ second unit has been solely reliant on Reid for its scoring punch. Dillingham has shown some promising signs in short stints over the last 10 days, but the ups and downs are still pronounced. Shannon can’t seem to score with his right hand. Mike Conley has been out with right Achilles tendinopathy, and Jaylen Clark was benched for nearly the entire second half.
Signs are pointing toward Edwards returning Friday against Oklahoma City, which would push Hyland back to the bench and give Minnesota more firepower. But it would be a big help if Shannon, in particular, could start giving the team a more consistent offensive push. Both Shannon and Dillingham have played some of their best basketball against the Thunder, so maybe, ironically, a date with the league’s best team is just what they need.
Ryan Saunders reflects
Former Timberwolves head coach Ryan Saunders was back in town as an assistant on Memphis coach Tuomas Iisalo’s staff. He has been back in this building many times since he was fired in 2021 thanks to the years he spent as an assistant with Minnesota’s division rival, the Denver Nuggets.
This was the first time, however, that Saunders got an up-close look at the classic court the Wolves use when they play in their throwback jerseys with trees on the trim. The court brought Saunders back to his days as a ball boy in the Kevin Garnett era, when Saunders’ father, Flip, served as head coach. The nostalgia of the court and the jerseys took him aback.
He pointed to a grouping of three trees that line the court right in front of the Timberwolves bench.
“I keep looking at that first tree,” he said.
He told a story of his father sitting in a timeout huddle and being unable to locate a dry-erase board to draw up a play. So Flip took a Sharpie out of his back pocket and drew up a play on that first tree as Ryan looked on from the baseline.
Back in those days, teams did not swap out their courts every other night to fit one of five different jerseys they might wear. Ryan said that the Sharpie did not wipe off the tree as cleanly as it would on a whiteboard.
“It stayed on there for years,” Ryan Saunders said.
