No, the Minnesota Timberwolves are not tanking – at least not intentionally. Although someone unaware of the context of their past five games – they were crucial in helping determine the Wolves’ spot in the playoff race, not the draft lottery – might have been mistaken watching this team’s absence of sustained focus and crisp execution over that sorry stretch of basketball.
Last Wednesday night, after a pair of ugly losses to Orlando at home and then the Los Angeles Lakers on the road, the Wolves were quickly undressed by the Los Angeles Clippers, who stole the ball from them five times in the first three minutes and 45 seconds of the game to jump out to a 12-2 lead.
On Sunday afternoon, after narrowly beating a Golden State Warriors team missing its four top players Friday night, the Wolves watched the Oklahoma City Thunder block two shots, generate a steal and garner three offensive rebounds en route to a 9-0 run in the first three minutes and 33 seconds of that game.
The standings will tell you that the Wolves are still very much a factor in the sardine-packed tin of teams competing for spots from third-to-seventh place in the Western Conference. As of Monday morning, they were a game and a half out of third place and a game and a half out of seventh place. If the 2025-26 season ended Monday morning, they would be the sixth-seeded team going on the road to play the third-seeded Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the playoffs. That is the exact same scenario that occurred last season, when the Wolves trounced the Lakers, and then went on to beat the Warriors to reach the conference finals for the second consecutive season.
The eye test, especially over the past five games, will tell you that the Wolves aspirations as a legitimate contender for another conference finals berth, let alone an NBA championship, are fraudulent.
Minnesota has traditionally played well against the Thunder, who are on the way to finishing with the best record in the Western Conference for the third year in a row and the best in the NBA overall for two years running. Going into Sunday afternoon’s game, OKC was 177-54 over that span – but just 5-6 against the Wolves.
After the starters began the game in a semi-coma, the team rallied with energy off the bench, specifically the two players acquired by president of basketball operations Tim Connelly near the trade deadline – Ayo Dosunmu and Kyle “Slo Mo” Anderson.
Ayo checked in after Jaden McDaniels committed his second foul five minutes into the game and Wolves down 14-5. He didn’t really touch the ball until nearly two minutes later when he received a dribble-handoff from Gobert out beyond the three-point arc and immediately used the de facto screen to splash a 26-foot trey. The Wolves committed a trio of turnovers until his next shot, a hard dribble into the paint for a contested pull-up midrange jumper that again didn’t even touch the rim. And his last shot of the period came when Slo Mo stole the ball and gave him a shovel pass behind the free-throw line in the defensive end. Ayo cruised into second gear crossing half court, then engaged the jets for a drive that ended with a runner amid three Thunder defenders from four feet out.
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Watching Ayo move with the brisk, natural grace and beauty of a mountain stream sharpened the sense that most of his teammates were caught inside an onerous doom loop of failing expectations, and thus beset by a mix of caution and heedless bursts, in body and decision-making. These past five games have been fraught with reckoning for a veteran team that collectively figured a chunk of the foundational work had been banked via two extended playoff runs, even as they suspected that might not be so.
Ayo and Slo Mo don’t carry that baggage, which is at least partly why the Wolves were +8 in the minutes (6:50 for Ayo, 3:46 for Slo Mo) they were on the court in the first quarter. They ignited Randle, who had come in with Slo Mo for his second rotation of the game and had continued his slump since the All-Star break by missing four of five shots. But suddenly the Wolves were again playing the defending champs tough, and he caught a rhythm via the faster pace Ayo (and Naz Reid) were pushing, which organically accelerated his own decisions.
Randle made 5-of-7 from the field in the second quarter, scoring 12 points (just two behind his per-game average since the break) and dishing of assists, both three-pointers by Ayo, who finished the half 6-of-6, evenly cleaved between two-pointers and treys, for 15 points. The Wolves were up by six, the team +18 for the half when the pace-setting Ayo and Naz were on the court.
The lead held well past the midpoint of the third quarter. Then coach Chris Finch subbed in Slo Mo for Donte DiVincenzo at the 4:36 mark and the Wolves up 71-66. Sixteen seconds later with the score the same, he brought in Gobert for Randle. OKC promptly went on a 14-2 run to vault ahead, 80-72 with five seconds to play in the quarter. It was the game’s decisive swing and gave cynical finger-pointers with various agendas plenty of ammunition.
For the folks who think Finch is out of his depth, the pairing of two awkward scorers in Gobert and Slo Mo was the latest inexplicable rotation doddering. Finch defenders could point out that with the playmaking Randle out, Slo Mo was needed against the ball-hawking Thunder defense, especially if Gobert was going to get any touches – he had just one shot when the subs were made and the Wolves record is 7-8 when he has four or fewer shots and 13-4 when he had eight or more.
For folks who think Gobert is a hapless galoot on offense, his getting his shot blocked twice in that key four-minute span (albeit one on an obvious foul that wasn’t called) was the latest evidence that there are games when his only shots should be his own putbacks of offensive rebounds. (See above for value of Gobert engagement.)
And for those who think that Ant doesn’t move the ball enough, his jacking up five shots in those four-and-a-half minutes – four of them contested, three in a crowd, only one of them made, and none of them with a glance at a teammate – verified that even when he is hobbling with an injured knee, hero-ball is a priority. Ant defenders could retort that his dish was Gobert’s only shot attempt prior to the rotation switch and the Thunder defense forced him into a clownish air ball. Ant defenders could also note that Slo Mo was a second ignorable teammate of his. Ant defenders and critics could both point to the Wolves final points of the third quarter, a nifty pass to Ayo for a corner trey that ended OKC’s 14-2 run.
But it didn’t end the Wolves woes. OKC had shot 4-6 during the run, with all the baskets assisted and all but two of their points coming from the bench personnel. The Wolves had shot 1-9, with the bucket, unassisted of course, coming from Ant.
And in the fourth quarter the Thunder were +9, generating eight more field goal attempts than Minnesota due to five Wolves turnovers and three offensive rebounds. The Wolves forced three Thunder miscues and had one offensive rebound.
The Wolves turned the ball over 25 times, the Thunder, 7. OKC got 29 points off those Timberwolves turnovers, while Minnesota garnered 6 points.
The statistics of the last five games are gruesome, depicting a team in dysfunction. They have been the inverse of opportunistic, with generating an NBA-worst -11 points off turnovers per game, borne of ceding the sixth-most points off turnovers, 20.8 per game, and producing the least points off their opponents’ turnovers, 9.8 per game. By contrast, they are +0.3 points off turnovers (18.2 to 17.9) overall this season.
Their -10 disparity in second-chance points is also the worst mark in the NBA over the past five games. The Wolves have averaged just 9.6 second-chance points (next-to-last ahead of only the Milwaukee Bucks) and have given up 19.6 second-chance points (more than anybody but the Detroit Pistons the Memphis Grizzlies over the past five games.) For the season, they are dead-even; scoring and allowing 14.4 second-chance points per game.
For dedicated watchers of this Timberwolves team, this ugly stretch seems like the bad habits that were cultivated over the first two-thirds of the season coming home to roost. For dozens of games in the 2025-26 campaign, the Wolves played to the caliber of their opponent rather than a high standard of their own.
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The versatile perimeter talents of Nickeil Alexander-Walker have been sorely missed, not even remotely replaced by the “young core” trio of Jaylen Clark, Terrence Shannon Jr. and Rob Dillingham, although Ayo is welcome relief here. Vintage Mike Conley – even last year’s inexorably aging vintage – is likewise missed, and is surely the reason Slo Mo has found his way into the rotation so readily.
On the other hand, the blossoming of Jaden McDaniels has hit a significant speed bump over these last five games – his recovery is intimately tied to the team’s chances of pulling out of this skid.
Tuesday night, the Wolves open up a three-game homestand against Phoenix, who have beaten Minnesota twice and, as the seventh-place team, are threatening to leapfrog into the final guaranteed playoff spot and banish the Wolves to the play-in tournament. The homestand closes out with two winnable games, versus Utah and Portland.
After that, the schedule gets rugged through April 2, beginning with a road game against the Celtics, home contests versus Detroit and Houston, and then a road trip that features a rematch with Detroit after an ostensibly easier game against Dallas.
There isn’t an extended pocket of games against foes with losing records left; the Wolves waltzed through the cupcake portion of things already. In fact Wolves fans would be right to feel queasy about the final two games – on the road against the Rockets in a game that will almost certainly jolt the standings, and then back home for the finale against the New Orleans Pelicans.
Yes, the Pels are down at 13th place in the West with a record of 22-46. But on February 6 they beat the Wolves at Target Center, a victory that has initiated a five-week spurt in which they have won eight and lost six. Notorious Wolves menace Zion Williamson is unusually healthy and Dejounte Murray is finally back from injury. It’s a deceptively tough matchup.
By then we will know if this five-game swoon was an unfortunate blip and timely wake-up call, or the announcement of a sobering reality destined to shake the current status quo.
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