The warriors again pursued by the Timberwolves personal bogeymen originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO – Should the Warriors find his way to the NBA playoffsthe Western Conference team shaping up to be his personal bogeyman was the one they saw on Friday night.
The Warriors couldn’t beat the Minnesota Timberwolves in four tries last season and the first meeting between the teams this season, a 107-90 losstakes that streak to five consecutive losses.
Golden State still has no antidotes to the myriad problems posed by the Timberwolves, who hibernated for the first month of the season but are among the best teams in the NBA.
The Warriors took an early 15-8 lead, saw it disappear within 90 seconds and spent the next 39 minutes facing deficits that reached as many as 23.
“We were down 19 points in the second quarter, and then we had a good finish in the second and a big run in the third to cut the score to three,” coach Steve Kerr said. “We felt like we were right where we needed to be. But it got away from us again at the beginning of that fourth quarter.”
Although the Warriors have a dramatically different roster and Minnesota also made a couple of significant changes, the result is the same.
The Timberwolves still have an answer to almost every problem the Warriors pose. Minnesota has a legitimate star in Anthony Edwards, but so much more. Rudy Gobert is a deterrent at the rim, Jaden McDaniels is an excellent wing defender and still holds his own on both ends.
With their size, agility, athleticism and patience, the Wolves seem to live for the “privilege” of using defense to torture their opponents before strangling them.
With Jonathan Kuminga struggling (13 points, 6 of 15 field goals, -7 in 29 minutes) and Andrew Wiggins gritting his teeth until his right ankle gave way In the third quarter, the Warriors were forced to hope that Stephen Curry could muster enough offense to keep them afloat.
While that’s normally a good bet, Curry is trying to ignore the nagging pain affecting both knees. His 32 minutes illustrate the vigor of his heart, his 6-for-17 shooting tells the story of his aching body, exacerbated by waves of defenders closing in on him.
Golden State’s offense is, at its best, a symphony of constant motion, players darting in multiple directions and the ball spinning around to find someone open. The Timberwolves don’t allow that. This is a team that had held its last three opponents to an average of 84 points.
The Warriors scored 15 points in the second quarter, on 5-of-20 shooting, and only found 18 points in the fourth quarter on 8-of-20 shooting. They were 3-of-18 from deep in those two decisive quarters.
Then there were the turnovers. The further the game went on, the more there were, with 13 in the second half.
A Chase Center crowd rarely starts lining up for exits early, but that was the case when Anthony Edwards hit a mid-range jumper to give the Timberwolves a 15-point lead with 5:32 remaining.
The Warriors surely know that a 15-point lead can be erased in a few minutes, but most people in the building had seen enough to know that. these The Warriors would not achieve such a comeback against those Timber Wolves.
“They have a lot of long athletes,” Kerr said. “They have a good puzzle. The puzzle suits them very well. They have wing defenders, on-ball defenders with Conley and McDaniels, and Gobert at the rim. “It is a well-formed and well-trained team.”
It’s not that Golden State can never beat the Timberwolves. The way the teams are currently constructed, it is an enormous challenge that would require spectacular performance by the coaching staff and several players. The Warriors are too competitive to want to avoid another team. But if there was a team in the West designed to give them fits, it would be the Timberwolves.
A seven-game playoff series would be ominous. So will the next game. The teams will meet again on Sunday. Same location, 5:30 pm PT.
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