Timberwolves blow late lead, fall to Hornets despite 62 points from Towns

Towns set a career high but it wasn't enough Monday night.

As Karl-Anthony Towns knocked down shot after shot, it felt like the Timberwolves were going to run away from the Charlotte Hornets Monday night at Target Center. 

But despite his historic night and a 15-point lead entering the fourth quarter, Minnesota found itself down one with 12.5 seconds remaining in the game. 

The Wolves got the ball to Towns, exactly where you'd want it to go on a night he was shooting lights out on his way to a franchise-record 62-point performance, and he drove down the right side of the lane, only to see the ball stripped out of his hands. The Wolves' hope of securing a win was stripped away with it.

Final: Hornets 128, Timberwolves 125. 

"We figured there would be a crowd, if we isoed him in the middle of the floor, they would bring help and he either has the shot or makes the kickout," Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said of the play drawn for Towns. "I haven't seen the play on replay, looked like there was a lot of contact on it, but it didn't turn out." 

Come on @NBAOfficial this is RIDICULOUS! Can’t believe we lose cause of this BS pic.twitter.com/7RSNTnw5gU

— MNMuse (@statmusewolves) January 23, 2024

There was certainly a lot of contact on that play and will almost surely end up in the two-minute report, but that was far from Finch's biggest frustration Monday night. He began his postgame presser lamenting his team's "disgusting performance of defense," which included Charlotte outscoring the Wolves 36-18 in the final quarter.

It spoiled a special performance from Towns, who hit his first eight 3-pointers en route to 44 first-half points — a Timberwolves franchise record and the most points scored in a half at Target Center. The Hornets (10-31) showed no ability to slow him down through the first three quarters. Then came the fourth. 

Towns scored just four points in the final frame for the Wolves (30-13) on 2-for-10 shooting, including a last-second, game-tying 3-point attempt that never touched the hoop. Finch said towards the end of the game it felt like Towns was hunting shots. 

"But for a while, it was going," Finch said. "Down the stretch it kinda dried up for us." 

Everything was going early. Towns was knocking down 3-pointer after 3-pointer, attacking the paint and was even hitting pretty stepback jumpers. For almost the entire first half of the contest, it seemed the only place he could miss from, oddly enough, was the free-throw line. He uncharacteristically missed four from the charity stripe in the first half but finished the night 10 of 14 from the line. 

After posting back to back 22-point quarters, Towns kept the momentum going in the third as Minnesota built a 15-point lead heading into the fourth quarter. He scored 14 points in the frame and made it 60 points on the night with a floater early in the fourth quarter — at which point it felt like there was no chance the Wolves would lose. 

Towns' final stat line: 62 points on 21-for-35 shooting, including a 10-of-15 mark from long range, eight rebounds and two assists. He did, however, have seven turnovers. 

With Joel Embiid scoring 70 in the Philadelphia 76ers’ win over the San Antonio Spurs, that made Monday the first day with multiple 60-point games since April 9, 1978. Towns also became just the seventh player in NBA history to record multiple 60-point games in his career. Plenty of history was made Monday night.

The only thing that could've made it better for Towns and the Timberwolves was a win. But floaters from P.J. Washington and Terry Rozier broke open a tie game, giving the Hornets a 126-121 lead with just over two minutes remaining. 

Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Anthony Edwards each knocked down two key free throws apiece to cut the deficit to one, and Rudy Gobert forced LaMelo Ball into a bad, fadeaway 3-pointer from the right corner that gave the Wolves one last chance to take the lead with 12.5 seconds remaining.

Alexander-Walker, starting in place of Mike Conley, who was out for a rest day, put together a nice offensive showing, scoring 18 points while recording a pair of assists and picking up a steal. 

Edwards, who was questionable before the game with an illness, scored just nine points and took only 11 shots, but he did match a career high with 11 assists. 

But none of that mattered in the end. Not good ball movement from Edwards, another impressive start from Alexander-Walker or even a historic 62-point night from Towns could offset the Timberwolves' poor defensive showing that gifted the Hornets just their 10th win of the season.