Anthony Edwards calls Timberwolves ‘frontrunners’ who ‘aren’t even happy for each other out there’

Minnesota is a bad team right now. The Timberwolves have lost four straight and 7 of 9, and they have the 25th-ranked offense in the league during that span. The defense that has gotten this team near the top of the West has been sluggish this season (12th in the league).

Anthony Edwards had a harsh assessment of what’s going on with the Timberwolves after they blew a 12-point lead midway through the fourth quarter and lost to an undermanned Kings team on Wednesday night, with quotes from his rant over Chris Hine of the Minnesota Star Tribune And Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic.

“I don’t like front runners. I’m not a frontrunner myself. I hate having leaders or thinking we have leaders on the team. I don’t think we have anything like that. It looks like we were on top tonight.”, 100%.

“We were devastated, nobody wanted to say anything. We stood up and everyone cheered tonight.”

“It’s like we’re not even happy for each other out there,” he told Rudy Gobert as he walked out. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

“Internally, we’re incredibly soft as a team,” Edwards said. “Not towards the other team, but internally we are soft. We can’t talk to each other. Just a few small children. Just like we play with a few small children. Everyone, the whole team. We can just.” We don’t have to talk to each other because we can’t go down that path…

“However many of us there are, all 15 of us, we hole up in our own shells and just distance ourselves from each other,” he said. “It’s obvious. We can see it. I can see it, the team can see it, the coaches can see it. The fans fucking booing us. That’s crazy, man.”

Two things are very different to this season from last season in Minnesota – how much of that is due to the preseason trade of Karl-Anthony Towns for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo is up for debate. Although it’s certainly part of it. For example, last season in New York, DiVincenzo played 1% of his minutes at the point, this season he has had to do so 66% of the time, and that is neither his natural fitness nor his strength. It shows.

The first thing that’s different is what Edwards complained about – an apparent lack of cohesion in the locker room that’s affecting the court. Last season, Minnesota’s locker room was all about how together they were, and every night they simply played harder than the team they were playing. As a result, they won a lot of games. As Edwards has revealed, that is not the case this season.

The second is defense. Last season that was the identity of this team, the Timberwolves were the best defense in the NBA. This season they are 12th in the league (and slightly worse, 15th in the league in their last nine games). The team’s defensive net rating was 3.7 points per 100 possessions better a season ago, and could keep them in the game – or win it – for a night (or a quarter) when the offense was struggling. Not this season.

None of these problems are easy solutions.