After four consecutive losses at home, Timberwolves hit the road

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch was asked Sunday if going on the road can be something that helps turn around a four-game losing streak early in the season, since it can be a chance for a young team to bond and focus only on basketball.

Finch shrugged his shoulders.

"Might as well try it," Finch said with a laugh. "It still comes down to we just have to play better. We've had double-digit leads in every game at some point or another. We just got to keep trusting the things that we were doing well for small batches [and] extend those periods of play."

Finch wasn't here in the past three years and that recent history has shown the first road trip of a season that makes its way to the West Coast can be disastrous for the Wolves.

Three seasons ago, the Wolves went 0-5 on a West Coast road trip in November. That's when reality set in that the team was likely better off trading Jimmy Butler sooner than later for the sake of moving on as an organization from that situation. They dealt Butler to Philadelphia the day after a loss in Sacramento.

Two seasons ago, the Wolves were 10-9 before embarking on a four-game swing in early December through Dallas, Oklahoma City, Los Angeles and Phoenix. The Chris Paul jersey tuck game, in which Paul prompted a technical foul against the Wolves for pointing out to an official that a Wolves player had his jersey untucked, was on that trip. That came near the beginning of an 11-game losing streak that erased all good vibes from the decent start.

Last season, the Wolves started 2-0 with a win over the Jazz in Utah. But Karl-Anthony Towns hurt his wrist late in that game before the team went to Los Angeles for a pair of games against the Lakers and Clippers. The Wolves lost each of those by more than 20 points and began a stretch in which they lost 11 of their next 12.

This road trip begins in Memphis before jumping to San Francisco to play the Warriors and Los Angeles for games against the Lakers and Clippers.

The Grizzlies, Monday's opponent, are a step ahead of where the Wolves want to be. They made the play-in last season and have started off 5-4 this season behind point guard Ja Morant, who has had a strong start to the season in averaging 25.2 points, 7.1 assist and 5.6 rebounds per game.

The Wolves blew a 20-point lead in a 104-84 loss to the Clippers on Friday and blew a double-digit lead in a 115-97 defeat by the Magic on Monday — two games they could have won that would have removed the horror from this four-game losing streak.

The biggest issue in each game was consistency. There were stretches of good play in both games, even for the maligned Wolves offense, but extending that for a full 48 minutes has been one of the biggest issues for a young team.

"Young is a synonym for inconsistent," Finch said. "The teams that are playing well in the league right now are those teams that have been together with a well-defined identity, system, a core of players that have been executing it. We have a core of players back but we're still figuring out who we are. It's not quite the same. Everybody has their rough patch and ours happens to be right now."

The Wolves might get point guard D'Angelo Russell back at some point, though Finch didn't know if that would be Monday. Russell missed the past two games because of a right ankle sprain but was able to practice Sunday. He is listed as questionable.

Regardless, the Wolves know they can play stretches of good basketball without Russell. They just can't keep it up for long enough.

"It's just all of us sticking together and continuing to have that confidence and encouragement between us and our teammates," forward Jaden McDaniels said. "I feel like that's the best way, trust in each other."