MILWAUKEE – In the Timberwolves locker room, after their worst fourth-quarter collapse of the season following a disastrous 110-103 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, there were no raised voices. No heads down. There was plenty of chatter and even some laughter. Not what most might expect after the team gave away a 24-point lead in the fourth.
“We good,” guard Anthony Edwards said. “I mean, it’s a part of the game. Of course we didn’t want to lose. But we can’t be in bad spirits because we know we need to win next game. So, we can’t really think too much about it. It happened. I don’t think we feel too down about it.”
Coach Chris Finch, who can be blunt in postgame news conferences when his team doesn’t play well, did his best to shrug off what was in the running for the team’s most inexplicable loss at the worst moment of the season.
“It’s a bad fourth quarter against a zone defense,” Finch said. “I don’t think it’s a microcosm of the season.”
It wasn’t just a bad fourth quarter against that zone defense, it looked like the Wolves had never seen one. The numbers will put fans in a bad mood again: nine fourth-quarter turnovers, 4-for-20 from the field, and the Wolves went 8 minutes, 34 seconds without a field goal after going ahead 95-71 with 10:09 to play. Milwaukee scored 23 consecutive points over the next 5:13. Bad pass after bad pass. They settled for threes, and Milwaukee capitalized on a lot of those miscues. Giannis Antetokounmpo had 13 of his 23 points in the fourth and Kevin Porter Jr. had 12 of his 21 for the Bucks, who snapped the Wolves’ five-game win streak.
“As frustrating as it is, we can’t let it linger into the next game,” said Julius Randle, who had nine points, six assists but five turnovers. “We don’t have time for that now. I believe in this team. I believe we will do it. We just gotta do it.”
Some of that belief might be out of necessity. At this point in the season, with the Western Conference standings in such a logjam for seeds four through eight, the Wolves don’t have time to fester in anger or regret. As Edwards said, a must-win game is on the schedule Thursday in Memphis. The team awaited late results Tuesday to see where they stood in the standings headed into Wednesday.
“We know we need the next game,” said Edwards, who broke the single-season franchise record for points by scoring 25. “Team we play next is fighting for a playoff spot. It’s game over, we ain’t really tripping. I ain’t really tripping. I’m mad we lost, but I can’t do nothing about it. I know we need to win next game. Next game is bigger than this.”
