Timberwolves melt down in fourth quarter, fall below .500 with loss to Warriors

SAN FRANCISCO – If there was ever a game that hit on all the things that doom this season's 2022-23 Timberwolves, it was Sunday's 109-104 loss to Golden State.

The night began with a dollop of bad rebounding and mistakes on offense, as the Wolves allowed the shorthanded Warriors to erase all of a 14-point first-quarter lead thanks to 11 turnovers and 14 second-chance points.

Then the game ended with the Wolves unable to hold a double-digit fourth-quarter lead, which evaporated because they couldn't score down the stretch. For good measure, the Wolves also threw in an 11-for-21 performance at the free-throw line.

After holding a 99-96 lead with 4 minutes, 35 seconds remaining, the Wolves went scoreless over the next 3:49 as the Warriors scored the next 11.

This loss was especially painful because the Warriors were so shorthanded without three starters in Draymond Green, Stephen Curry and Andrew Wiggins, among others. Klay Thompson scored 32 points for Golden State.

"I feel like a lot of times we're beating ourselves," center Naz Reid said. "With us being young, we forget the habits and situations we have ourselves in. We can control those situations, but we might forget or slip up and things like that."

The Wolves didn't have Rudy Gobert (illness), Taurean Prince (personal reasons) and Jaylen Nowell (left knee), but had more than enough firepower to lead most of the game. Reid scored a career-high 30 points, but it couldn't make up for all the Wolves' mistakes and a 5-for-19 night from Anthony Edwards, who finished with 12 points.

The Warriors committed multiple turnovers late and almost allowed the Wolves to tie it, but a Jordan McLaughlin three-pointer from the left corner missed with the Wolves down 107-104 and 13.3 seconds to play.

Edwards said he felt physically fine and he wasn't tired, he just missed his shots.

"It's super tough," Edwards said. "I struggled. I didn't do nothing tonight."

Meanwhile, his coach was lamenting the lack of a whistle Edwards got around the rim all night. Edwards shot only one free throw and that came on a defensive three-second call.

"I don't understand it," Chris Finch said. "Maybe it's crowded and it's tough to see [near the hoop], but he's got one of the highest rim rates in the league and we need a little more benefit of the doubt getting to the line there."

Finch seemed more disappointed with that than he was in the Wolves' play. He left Sunday's more encouraged by what he saw and not lamenting a missed opportunity. That attitude extended to some of the players who spoke afterward such as Reid, who said the Wolves ran what they wanted on offense late, the shots just didn't fall.

"We responded to everything and if there was another two minutes in the game or another minute in the game, maybe we finish on top," Finch said. "But in the first half we had four or five turnovers in a row that let them back in the game."

It was five, and that began with the Wolves ahead 26-17 in the first quarter. It was moments like that, guard Mike Conley said, that the team's youth can show.

"We can talk about the last two minutes, but there's a lot of things that go on … that set us up for those positions," Conley said. "Youth will do that. You get guys worried about missing a shot and they turned it over and might be thinking about that particular play too long. Then they miss an assignment on the defensive end. It's all little things that can be fixed."

But can the Wolves — who fell a game below .500 with their third consecutive loss — fix everything in time to prevent a tumble out of playoff contention, especially when they tend to make the same mistakes?

"You can tell them all you want," Conley said. "I tell my kids not to touch things. They still do. They burn their hands sometimes. Sometimes that's the learning experience that happens. But in this game and this sport, as professionals we have to have that urgency to get it done and we have to do it right now."