The Minnesota Timberwolves fell on Friday night to the New Orleans Pelicans in a game in which they should have won. Let’s look at the player grades.
This game felt all too familiar for Minnesota Timberwolves fans.
Before the season started, Jimmy Butler requested to be traded and was booed when he was on the court. Anthony Davis recently did the same thing to the New Orleans Pelicans and was met with a series of boos to start the game.
Davis played Friday night but was only in the game for 25 minutes — which was 25 too many for the Timberwolves. The Wolves came away with yet another loss on the road, falling by a score of 122-117. Put simply, this was a game they needed to win if they wanted to stay in the mix of the Western Conference playoff race.
Other than Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, Minnesota didn’t receive a ton of great production. The two combined for 55 points and accounted for much of the rebounding and playmaking. The team as a whole shot 46-for-91 (50.5 percent) and 9-of-21 (42.9 percent) from 3-point range.
Where things went south was allowing the Pelicans to get to the free throw line, where they shot 27-for-28. Additionally, Minnesota also didn’t take care of the basketball, committing 15 turnovers on the night.
The rest of the players
After the trade deadline passed, Anthony Tolliver remained on the team. However, he was nowhere to be found, getting just three minutes. His shooting ability would have been nice to have tonight.
Isaiah Canaan received the start tonight with all the injuries the Wolves were suffering. On the last day of his 10-day contract, Canaan put up 12 points, five assists, two rebounds and two steals. It’ll be something to monitor if the team wishes to re-sign him to another 10-day.
What’s Next?
Minnesota will have the rest of the weekend off, getting a home game against the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday night at 7 p.m. CT. This is, once again, a must-win game as the Wolves have lost their last four games and have gone 0-4 in the month of February thus far.