As for the Clippers, the step was too high for the Wolves of Rudy Gobert, but they will have given everything! Deprived of three players from their rotation (Jaden McDaniels, Naz Reid and Kyle Anderson) for this 5th round, Anthony Edwards’ teammates leave the stage with a performance full of courage, but also frustration. They led by 15 points, they were behind, they came back to the score, and finally they failed on a last 3-pointer missed at Edwards’ buzzer.
“It’s not Ant because Ant has been fantastic”, warns Karl-Anthony Towns. ” It’s a series in which I think we all have something to be ashamed of, myself included. I just have to be better. Ant is one hell of a player. I think that’s the future of this league. We have it all. We just have to keep working with each other. »
A close-knit group from start to finish
But the young fullback doesn’t want to hear that, and he blames himself. “I have to do better. That’s all I have to do. I have to play better” lance Edwards, who was 3-point: 0 out of 6! For him, the absence of Kyle “Slo” Anderson weighed heavily on this last meeting. “Ah if we had only had Slo…” he sighs. “We would have gotten out of it and we would have forced a Game 6. But the bad news followed for us, one after the other… But I would like to congratulate my teammates, we all stuck together. We stuck together despite the adversity. Hats off to these guys.”
Same story for Rudy Gobert : “I’m not proud to lose 4-1 to anyone, but I’m proud of the way we fought. I’m proud of the guys who upped their game when maybe they didn’t have a huge role in the regular season, but they showed up when we needed them most and they got us. given a chance. I am proud of everyone, of the coaches, of all the members of this franchise, who have continued to fight and put us in the best conditions to have a chance to win”.
Wolves play best with their backs to the wall
For the Frenchman, the foundations are there, and Year II of this team will allow him to really take off. His coach believes in it. “The main characteristic of this team is that we always played our best basketball when we were in desperate mode” observes Chris Finch. “That’s not how we want to do it. Once again, it is to our credit. We had many opportunities during the season to let go or give up, but we never did. That’s what I like about us. The guys kept fighting. But you know, a more mature team doesn’t find themselves in these situations as often and that’s part of our progression. »
The most frustrating, perhaps, is having assembled a team around “Twin Towers”, and losing this Game 5 because of offensive rebounds: 16 for the Nuggets, including 9 for Nikola Jokic alone…
