Anthony Edwards' statement on offensive woes is more than a little concerning

Up until the end of November, the Minnesota Timberwolves were running into some serious struggles that mostly concerned their defense. After hanging their hats on strong all-around defense last season, it was painful to see this group have so much trouble with getting stops consistently.

That problem continued up until Anthony Edwards decided to take matters into his own hands and call the team out for being "soft" internally and not having a defensive identity. Rather than crumble under the pressure, the rest of his teammates took his words to heart and rallied around his message, putting together an impressive defensive stretch since that point.

But now that the defense has been mostly solved, the focus turns to the Wolves' offensive struggles. The issues for this team on that side of the ball were as evident Thursday night against New York as they have been in any game this season. Minnesota simply could not keep up with the high-scoring offense of the Knicks, led by none other than Karl-Anthony Towns.

After the game, in typical fashion, Edwards did not hold back on his true thoughts concerning the team's offensive struggles. "We don't have s--- on offense," he said. "We don't have no identity. I mean, we know I'm going to shoot a bunch of shots, we know Ju (Julius Randle) going to shoot a bunch of shots. And that's all we know, we don't really know anything else. I mean, it's not on coaches at all. It's on us. We're out there playing, but we've got to make it easier for each other. The coaches put us in great positions too, man. We just don't do it."

The Timberwolves need more easy offense

Well, this is about as strong of language as you can get concerning an open and honest assessment of your team's offense. Just like when he criticized his team's defense three and a half weeks ago, Ant told it like it is on Thursday night. One thing the Timberwolves are lacking right now is easy, go-to offensive actions that will have a high probability of getting them some points on the board every time out. When asked whether he had ideas of where Minnesota could find those things, Edwards candidly said he did not.

"Nope," he said. "Have y'all interviewed coach yet? Whatever he said, offensively I'm just going to go with what he said." Fair enough from Ant. One "easy" offensive look the Wolves would probably like to have more of right now is those downhill actions that get Edwards a shot at the rim, where he obviously shoots a high percentage. Ant explained that right now, he simply does not have enough room to operate with the way opposing defenses are throwing defenders at him in those situations.

"If you watch the game, it's nothing for me to do when I get downhill," said Edwards. "Everybody wants me to get downhill, I know that's my strength. I get to the rim, lay the ball up, dunk the ball, but I can't do that if there's no lane. It's not open. Every team we've played did a great job of sitting in the gaps. When I get to the rim, putting four people at the rim. So, I mean, I'm sorry people. There's nothing I can do about going to the hole right now."

Going back to the topic of generating those easy offensive looks, Mike Conley also weighed in about the importance of making that happen. "You don't want to be robotic in nature, but it is a lot of the structured kind of mindset where you run to a spot, run to an X on the floor, where regardless of what it looks like, somebody just has to fill these four or five spots. Where the guy with the ball, Ant, Julius, whoever has it, now has an open look at the floor where their decision-making is a lot more clear.

"We have too many times where we have two or three guys fuddled up in a corner, or at the top of the key on a fast break. We've got three guys running on the right side, and nobody on the left side. Like, we have to be able to space the floor correctly all the time ... Because that will lead to easy buckets." This is some great insight from the Wolves' point guard. Perhaps the quicker Minnesota can figure out their spacing issues on a fundamental level, the faster this offense can become a lethal one.