Wolves Lose to Lakers

Against an opponent with zero available point guards, the Wolves were unable to take advantage, played a terrible 2nd half, and lost a game they should have won.

Usually after a loss, I'm unhappy, but I also realize that it's the NBA. Both teams get paid, sometimes you get beat. But tonight was just awful.

This was the worst loss of the season in my view. A complete embarrassment. A failure to execute, especially in the 2nd half, when the Wolves fell behind and never were able to regain their footing.

The theme tonight was poor execution and lack of intelligence.

A series of awful shots early in the 4th quarter by Alexey Shved and J.J. Barea, while Love was still on the floor was emblematic of the lack of intelligence.

Corey Brewer's horrific 0-8 with three turnovers and several miserable attempts to dribble the ball was terrible execution. Adelman's refusal to take him out of the game in the third quarter was not smart.

Love's five shot attempts in the 2nd half until the last minute when it was too late? Who thought that was a good idea?

Their occasionally horrifying transition defense that led to several easy baskets, the bench's catastrophic 8-27...lousy execution, poor thinking.

I'm not a fan of guessing mindsets or judging effort, but the takeaway from that game for me was that the Wolves were simply not prepared to play well enough to win. They had one effective quarter driven by Lakers turnovers, but other than that, they looked slow and unsure how to attack.

Defensively, the Lakers shot 54%, and got 50 points in the paint, which is utterly unacceptable given their roster. Time and time again rotations failed to get to the right place in time, and add in Nick Young's ridiculous shooting night, and here we are.

Up until the last 4 minutes, though, I still thought they would find a way. Instead, things completely fell apart, as they began turning the ball over, taking rushed shots, and seeing everything the Lakers threw up go in.

I expected this team to be better. I've been expecting them to go on a winning streak. They still might. I'm not writing them off. But it's also possible they just aren't as good as I thought they would be.

It's late. I'll try to write more coherently about this tomorrow.

This is as dispirited as I've felt all season.

I really hated that game.