Timberwolves fall back to .500 as final shot misses in 107-105 loss to Celtics

BOSTON – The Timberwolves still lost on Sunday, and they fell to .500 at 8-8 with their 107-105 loss to the defending champion Celtics.

But the tone and tenor of how the Wolves lost mattered in the context of a demoralizing loss Thursday at Toronto in a game that caused a few soul-searching conversations between the players and with the coaching staff in recent days.

The sometimes eye-rolling term “moral victory” came up more than once, always with the condition that the team doesn’t want those, but that’s basically it was Sunday at TD Garden.

When asked what was present Sunday night that wasn’t on Thursday, Anthony Edwards said the difference was “playing hard.”

“We just don’t play hard,” said Edwards, who scored 28 points. “We came out to play hard tonight. We made a couple mistakes but the reason we were able to overcome those mistakes was we played hard the entire game.”

Edwards wasn’t the only one praising the best loss the Wolves have had in an inconsistent season, a loss that almost became a win had Naz Reid hit a three-pointer as time expired. Coach Chris Finch said he was hoping the team would get its “spirit” back. He saw evidence of that Sunday.

“I thought we’d come out and have a response, no doubt about it,” Finch said. “I know the chemistry and the makeup of our team, and we’re just kind of going through a tough patch. We got to figure it out. But I thought we took a step forward tonight.”

These postgame comments are good and bad. It’s good for the Wolves that there were positives to take from Sunday, and there were.

Edwards said center Rudy Gobert was “phenomenal” on the defensive end as the Wolves held Boston to its lowest point total of the season. The Wolves survived Jaylen Brown (29 points) hitting his first five threes of the game and later, they cut a 19-point deficit in the second half to two multiple times.

BOXSCORE: Boston 107, Timberwolves 105

“There’s no such thing as moral victories, but ... we’re staying together right now,” Wolves guard Donte DiVincenzo said. “We like how we fought. We don’t like how we dug ourselves a hole. But we like our fight, like our togetherness, and we had a chance to win it at the end of the game.”

The brightest spot of all was rookie Rob Dillingham, who had his best game of the season with 14 points on 6-for-10 shooting.

Dillingham had ice on a sprained right ankle that caused him to leave Thursday’s game, but he wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to play again Sunday with points guard minutes available as Mike Conley missed his second consecutive game because of a left great toe sprain.

“Coach asked me was I gonna be able to play? I said, ‘Heck, yeah,’” Dillingham said. “I didn’t know if I was, but I just taped it up and made sure I could.”

(For more on Dillingham, sign up here for Wolves Weekly, our Timberwolves newsletter, delivered every Tuesday to your inbox.)

But this Wolves team is not one that is learning how to be a playoff team. Relearning things like playing hard, earning moral victories — that’s a tough place to be for a team that is hoping it could build off its Western Conference finals appearance a season ago, even despite personnel changes brought on by the Karl-Anthony Towns trade for Julius Randle (23 points) and DiVincenzo.

When the Wolves lost two games at Portland earlier this month, they didn’t seem to think anything major was wrong. Perhaps Thursday they finally realized this team needs to improve quickly before the season slips away.

In his fifth season, Edwards is now in a leadership role. Before, his youth might have caused him to demur at being an open and candid leader, but he took the reins in the aftermath of Thursday to get the team back on track.

“Of course my role has increased as far as speaking and being a leader,” Edwards said. “I just try to be better at that. If I see something going on, I try to speak on it. Everybody do though. We all listen to each other.”

Edwards added “of course” they were going to play hard against the defending champion Celtics, but emphasized that they will have to bring that same energy against other opponents on the schedule.

“I hope we can grow from this,” he said.