In a final sprint in the race for the playoffs / play-in where few teams have the right to make mistakes, Minnesota had the bad idea to chain a series of three consecutive defeats, which relegated them from 6th to 9th place West. The first two failures were against more or less direct opponents, the Suns and the Lakers. But, the third disappointment was a task since the Wolves fell at home against the Blazers, already on leave to the point of moving with their C team. During this meeting, Karl Anthony Towns took just three shots, finishing with 8 points overall. After the meeting, very disappointed and frustrated, he had left the Target Center without even speaking to the media.
Tuesday evening, the wolves went to Brooklyn, and had no room for error. Result, they released the fangs to pocket a precious success, with the bonus of a very good Karl-Anthony Towns, this time, author of 22 points and 14 rebounds. After the game, the latter revealed that he had a conversation with his coach, Chris Finch, about what went wrong following the defeat against the Blazers.
“We had a conversation” unveils Karl-Anthony Towns. “We have a very good relationship and that conversation obviously paid off tonight. We had a good conversation about game philosophies, and we won today”.
Take advantage of the size advantage
The fruits of a conversation that were seen from the outset, since Karl-Anthony Towns took more shots (four) in the first four minutes of the game against the Nets than he had taken during the entire the loss to the Blazers.
“It sounded like KAT this time?” » quipped Chris Finch after the meeting. “It was my fault the other day. He needs to get more shots, there’s no doubt about that. It’s my fault. We came into this game with the intention of not only getting it back on track, but also taking advantage of the size advantage in our favor because they are playing a lot of smallball up front. We wanted to make sure we had an edge that we could take advantage of. If they doubled up, it created open shots. If they didn’t, which they didn’t, he was able to punish them.”.
If the All-Star Towns-Gobert pair impresses in size and complementarity, it has not yet convinced. Firstly because Towns was injured for four months, but also because since March 22, the date of his return, the Wolves attack ranks in 26th position, one of the worst in the league on the period. Only the Blazers, Spurs, Hornets and Jazz are worse. This is a sign that something is wrong in the Minnesota attack despite the presence of two strong attackers: Anthony Edwards and therefore Towns.
But on the inside, Wolves need to take advantage of their height advantage to further punish opposing teams.
“We are playing with two interiors and we might as well use the size advantages. What we did well today” pointed out Karl-Anthony Towns after the win over Brooklyn. “That’s what I was talking about after the game against the Lakers. We must make better use of our qualities instead of trying to dominate our opponents like in a game of chess. We could just play checkers”.
