Wolves blow 24-point lead in 4th, tumble to No. 8 in West
MILWAUKEE — Regular-season defeats don’t get much more brutal than the one the Minnesota Timberwolves suffered Tuesday.
The wide-open nature of the Western Conference playoff race doesn’t give them much time to stew over what went wrong.
Minnesota blew a 24-point lead by getting outscored 39-8 in the final 10 minutes of a stunning 110-103 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks that snapped a five-game winning streak.
The Timberwolves, who started the game in a four-way tie for fifth place in the West, are now alone in eighth.
“I have every confidence that we’ll be able to bounce back,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “We’ve got good guys. They’ll shake it off. We’ve had some tough losses before in the season. We didn’t expect to go undefeated over our last 10 games.”
But they sure didn’t expect to lose this one after leading 95-71 in the fourth quarter.
According to Sportradar, this marked only the fifth time that a team has won a game it trailed by at least 24 points in the fourth quarter since 1996-97, which is when the NBA started tracking play-by-play data. It was only the third time that one of those comebacks didn’t require an overtime session.
It has happened one other time this season, and Minnesota was on the other end of it, rallying to win 131-128 at Oklahoma City in overtime after trailing 106-81 with 10:33 left in the fourth quarter.
“We played great basketball for three quarters,” guard Donte DiVincenzo said. “We have to acknowledge what happened, but you don’t let the world blow up just because of this.”
The Timberwolves had no trouble explaining their collapse. The Bucks went to a zone in the fourth quarter, and the Timberwolves couldn’t solve it.
They shot 4-of-20 overall and 2-of-12 from 3-point range in the fourth quarter while committing eight turnovers.
“It was hard for every last one of us to get a look when they were in the zone,” All-Star guard Anthony Edwards said. “It messed us up.”
Minnesota forward Julius Randle noted that the Timberwolves have fared well against zones in the past. They just didn’t do it Tuesday.
He was asked whether he expected other team to start using zones against them more often.
“If teams are smart, probably,” Randle said. “I ain’t going to give them the blueprint.”
Minnesota still has reason to believe it can work its way out of the play-in tournament, in which the teams that finish seventh through 10th compete for the West’s final two playoff berths.
In fact, the Timberwolves are only a game out of fourth place, which would give them home-court advantage in the opening round. They have the best cumulative record against the pack of teams they’re fighting with to avoid the play-in games and a better overall Western Conference record than the Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Denver Nuggets and Golden State Warriors.
The Timberwolves finish a five-game trip Thursday at Memphis. The Grizzlies just lost starting guard Jaylen Wells to a broken wrist from a scary fall in the game at Charlotte on Tuesday.
Then the regular season wraps up for Minnesota with home games against lottery-bound Brooklyn and Utah on Friday and Sunday, when the Warriors face the Clippers in a game that will guarantee a loss for one of the competitors. The Grizzlies also host the Nuggets on Friday, ensuring another loss for one of them.
So the Timberwolves still have time to improve their playoff position. It starts by bouncing back and winning Thursday.
“The next game,” Edwards said, “is the biggest game of the season.”
Source: espn.com