Even in a loss, this Anthony Edwards statistic is a good sign for Timberwolves

TORONTO – There was more bad than good coming out of the Timberwolves' 97-94 loss to the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday night.

The offense looked sluggish and in need of a spark, while a familiar problem — allowing transition buckets — was the reason the Wolves lost.

But look at the boxscore and there was one encouraging statistic that could be a major positive sign for the Wolves moving forward: Anthony Edwards had 14 rebounds.

That tied a career high. One area in which the Wolves are looking to make significant improvement this season is on the glass, with coach Chris Finch saying repeatedly during training camp that Edwards and the team's other guards have to do a better job of getting long rebounds. The Wolves were one of the worst teams in the NBA at getting long rebounds a season ago, Finch said.

If Edwards can keep up that commitment to the glass, the Wolves might be much better in that department. He averaged 5.8 per game a season ago.

How did he feel about getting all those boards?

"I'm tired, boy," Edwards said. "We know everybody on the court is pretty much [6-6] or 6-7 for their team besides [Dennis] Schroder. I knew I had to get down there and fight with big Rudy [Gobert] and KAT [Karl-Anthony Towns]. That was big. I didn't expect myself to get 14 rebounds. That's pretty impressive."

It was the only pat on the back Edwards allowed himself on a night in which he took responsibility for the team's lack of offense.

It looked early on as if rebounding might be a problem again for the Wolves. Toronto's first five points came on second-chance opportunities. The Raptors had seven second-chance points after the first quarter, but they had only seven the rest of the game.

"I thought early in the game, they did a really good job of beating us up on the glass," Finch said. "They got the first three shots back of the game, but after that, we did a better job. It's been good to see [Edwards] rebound at a high level all season so far."

The Wolves had the fifth-worst defensive rebounding percentage in the NBA a season ago. They felt pretty good about how their half-court defense operated last season, and they felt good about it coming out of Wednesday night. The problems were on offense, which led to transition opportunities for Toronto.

Part of that defensive effort was how well the Wolves rebounded after the first quarter, with Edwards leading the team overall.

He pulled down one more than Gobert and four more than Towns. Nine of Edwards' rebounds were defensive. He and the Wolves would prefer that they hit enough shots so he won't have to pull down five offensive boards per game.

Edwards has said before that he was going to commit to rebounding, but perhaps this season he might do it on a more consistent basis.

"It is great to see him crashing. We need that from him. He's so athletic," guard Mike Conley said. "… I'd like us to make more shots to not have him offensive rebound like that. But I do like that it's in the forefront of our mind trying to get that ball back as much as we can."