Lackluster effort costs Timberwolves against Spurs for second time
The Spurs are supposed to be one of the worst teams in the NBA while the Wolves are expected to be a playoff team in the loaded West, so Minnesota finishing what appeared to be a very soft opening seven games of the season at 4-3, including two losses to the Spurs, is a major disappointment.
Minnesota trailed by double digits most of the game Sunday night, and despite cutting the lead to single digits in the fourth quarter, they were beaten by the Spurs 107-98.
Making Sunday's loss worse is the Spurs played without their best player, Devin Vassell, and Isaiah Roby. Without them, it was a starting five of Tre Jones, Keldon Johnson, Romeo Langford, Keia Bates-Diop and Jakob Poetl that dismantled the high-powered Wolves.
Johnson scored 25 and Bates-Diop scored 18, but it was Doug McDermott off the bench with 23 points who killed Minnesota. He hit seven threes and Johnson added five more from deep as the Spurs lit up the Wolves with 16 threes.
Minnesota shot 4-of-29 from deep and just 40.4% from the field as a team.
Anthony Edwards didn't make a shot until there was about four and a half minutes left in the third quarter. He scored 16 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter, but was otherwise a non-factor.
Karl-Anthony Towns had 26 points and 11 boards, but he scored just 9 points in the second half. And D'Angelo Russell shot 5-of-17 ,including 0-of-7 from three and finished with 10 points.
Minnesota now enters a difficult part of the schedule. They play at Phoenix Tuesday night, followed by the Bucks on Friday. After facing Houston, they then get the Knicks, Suns, Grizzlies and Cavaliers, the majority of whom are dangerous teams.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.