The Minnesota Timberwolves are headed south, and they’re doing so quickly.
Trading Karl-Anthony Towns was an odd move to make right before preseason tipped off to begin the NBA season. The Timberwolves were trying to shed long-term money, that much was known. But Towns’ chemistry with the team after nine years of service was unmatched.
The acquisition of Julius Randle and Dante DiVincenzo, in theory, is a good trade. Randle is a star talent and DiVincenzo is a prized role player. They haven’t quite clicked in Minneapolis like Towns did, though, and that’s not shocking in the slightest.
The trade is proving to be a problem early in the Timberwolves’ season.
On Wednesday, Minnesota suffered a 114-105 loss to the Sacramento Kings, which happened to be their fourth straight loss. It seems the loss broke the team and the locker room. They can no longer have conversations internally, and Edwards claimed the team was soft.
“We’ve been trying to figure this out for the whole year. We thought defense was our identity,” Edwards said. “It’s not looking like that at all… Our identity right now, me and Mike [Conley] was talking about it… we soft as hell, like, as a team, internally.”
Edwards scored 24 points, adding five rebounds, five assists and three steals. Still, his 9-of-24 shooting and defensive effort weren’t enough, as is the same for the rest of the team. The superstar guard confirmed that the issues are internal, too.
“Not to the other team, but, like, internally, we soft. We can’t talk to each other,” Edwards continued. “Just a bunch of little kids. Just like we playing with a bunch of little kids. We just can’t talk to each other. We gotta figure it out, man, because we can’t go down this road.”
With a losing record through 18 games, it’ll be intriguing to see if the team will reach a boiling point before turning a corner in the locker room. Should things remain rough, however, a trade should be in the cards rolling into the new calendar year.
As mentioned, the Timberwolves have now lost four straight games. They’ve got an 8-10 record in an incredibly difficult Western Conference. There’s certainly cause for concern for Minnesota.
Not only is the Timberwolves locker room in a shaky place, but it’s getting worse, not better, according to Edwards.
“However many of us it is, all 15, we go into our own shell and we’re just growing away from each other. It’s obvious. We can see it. I can see it, the team can see it, the coaches can see it,” Edwards said.
Facing adversity allows for a team to define themselves. Will they grow together? Or will they grow apart? As Edwards said, Minnesota is taking the latter route, for the worse, and it’s going to define their season in a big way.
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