There were some cruel, cruel losses to cover and rewrite throughout the year. It feels like we made all the excuses in the book, and tried with all our might to turn things around in a positive light, mostly to the potential long-term gains rather than the short-term losses.
Tonight is one of the most inexcusable losses I can remember.
The Memphis Grizzlies are under Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson, Jr., as well as Justise Winslow. Minnesota was at full strength tonight.
The Minnesota Timberwolves led by double figures in the second half of this game and threw it away inexplicably.
The players are certainly to blame (we will get there), but many of the coaching decisions at the end of the game raised questions.
Minnesota Timberwolves simply can not afford to play Juancho Hernangomez in key closing times. He kills the team. He’s not coming back, he’s back to his shooting standards before Minnesota, and his defense is a killer. If you can not stay ahead of Kyle Anderson, who is literally nicknamed “Slo-Mo”, you need to give him enough space to launch his slow-motion three-pointer after staring. play the 4.
Do you know who I miss? Every PF Karl-Anthony Towns has ever played with not the name Juancho Hernangomez.
– Katie Davidson (@ByKatieDavidson) 14 January 2021
On top of that, Ricky Rubio was unfortunately just awful in his second series in Minnesota. It’s such a chase, but there really is no other way to set it.
Ryan Saunders may not be guilty of how poorly the two guys played, but he is certainly guilty of continuing them in the difficult times.
If confidence is a requirement for competence, those guys can not be in the rotation
– Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) 14 January 2021
So Ryan’s solution is to … put Ricky out there and keep Juancho out there?
What on earth is he thinking?
– Jack Borman (@ jrborman13) 14 January 2021
I just do not know, man. It was cruelly frustrating.
For what it’s worth, Ryan’s job here is not easy. I think the simple solution in Juancho’s place would be to play Jarred Vanderbilt, but that does not solve their Rubio problem. I love what Vanderbilt has done so far, but do they trust him enough to play PF in a tough time? Or do they still want to go small with YES at the 4, while Rubio plays the 1? This seems to be the difficult question to answer.
If you’ll have to play two non-shooters together anyway, I do not see what could be the damage if you roll out the Russell / Beasley / Okogie / Vando / KAT series at this point, but it’s not an easy choice again. .
At the end of the day, it’s another frustrating loss. I will note that Karl-Anthony Towns, D’Angelo Russell and Malik Beasley played well. Minnesota got almost nothing from anyone else, and that was it.
The Wolves will have to bounce back in the second leg of this series with baseball-style Memphis on Friday.