The exact time when the meltdown began Tuesday is less important than how it happened, but generally speaking, it was around 9 p.m. when both the Timberwolves and Twins turned into the worst versions of themselves.
The Wolves led 95-71 against the Bucks early in the fourth quarter before Milwaukee started chipping and eventually hammering away at the deficit using a basic zone defense.
Wolves players stood around befuddled, ending possessions with missed shots, ill-conceived drives and lazy passes that became transition buckets. Final score: Milwaukee 110, Minnesota 103.
At around the same time, the Twins had a decent threat extinguished when their highest-paid player (Carlos Correa) grounded into double play with runners on the corners in a 1-1 game in the eighth. They then lost the lead because reliever Griffin Jax airmailed a simple throw to first base. Final score: Royals 2, Twins 1.
The elapsed time of the entirety of the calamities was about 30 minutes, and it was one of the most embarrassing half-hours of Minnesota sports that I can recall.
I broke it down on Wednesday’s “Daily Delivery” podcast, but let’s take a closer look at what we learned from both games and teams here.
The bigger picture for the Wolves was more considerable than that of the Twins given the gravity of the loss, the sample size of their nearly completed season and their puzzling collective reaction afterward.
With a win they should have secured handily, the Wolves would have remained in a five-team logjam at 47-32 in the West, with tiebreaker edges and other schedule advantages giving them the inside track at a top-four seed and home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Instead, they fell to eighth and are in peril of needing to advance through the play-in round.
