How will Timberwolves respond to first losing streak of the season?

It says something about this Timberwolves season when consecutive losses can be considered the worst patch of adversity they have experienced through their first three months and first 33 games.

The Wolves were by far the last NBA team to lose consecutive games after they lost Monday 112-106 at New York and Wednesday 117-106 at home to New Orleans.

Wolves coach Chris Finch said you could see it coming from a team that didn't play nearly as well December into January as it did in November.

Finch said the Wolves haven't played with "pop and purpose" since two days before Christmas at Sacramento. So, what must they do?

"We've got to get our desperation back," Finch said. "We've got to play better. We've kind of been in second gear since then. This had been coming for a while. We just hadn't been very sharp."

Still best in the Western Conference at 24-9, the Wolves' two-game losing "streak" could be considered adversity.

"We've got to fix it," Finch said. "We've got to get our physicality back. We've got to get our defense back. We've got to get our identity back, which is more physical, bigger."

Veteran point guard Mike Conley calls it adversity simply because his team hadn't lost consecutive games until Wednesday night. They trailed the Pelicans by as many as 24 points in the third quarter and never by fewer than double digits in the fourth after they were outdone 32-22 in the second quarter and 33-25 in the third.

Until then, they had followed each of their first eight losses with a streak-stopping victory.

"It's such a long season," Conley said. "We weren't going to keep winning seven, eight games in a row, lose one, then win seven or eight. It doesn't happen that way. So we've got to go with the ebbs and flows. Right now, we've got to find our edge again. Find our swag that we were playing with earlier, especially defensively.

"That's the biggest thing for us. Everybody doing their job defensively is what has gotten us here. Our offense will come."

Three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert agreed his team's defense has slipped, but it can be reclaimed.

"Just go back to the basics," Gobert said. "Find our toughness. There are a million things we can talk about, but just focus on the simple things we have to do and do that with our heart. If we do that, everything else will follow."

Gobert said success sometimes can be too much, particularly if a player or team hasn't experienced it before.

"When you have a little success, sometimes you forget what got you there," he said. "You get complimented from everybody. It can soften you a little bit. When you get smacked, when you lose, it does the opposite."

Limited as it has been during his nine-year career in Minnesota, Wolves star Karl-Anthony Towns says "sustained success kind of gets boring."

"It gets monotonous," Towns said. "We've got to be OK being bored. We've got to be OK going out there and doing the same exact thing every night, regardless if we want to get cute and show more of our talent. … It's a good learning experience for us this season. We've found success. We've found sustained excess as well, but it's the first for a lot.

"We can say all the words. But at the end of the day, we just got to play better. We've lost these two games, but we've got to snap back."