That was a fun one, just wish it had started a little bit earlier.<\/p>\n
Late Friday night, the Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a> took on the Houston Rockets<\/a>. It was the second straight game for the Wolves without Anthony Edwards as he recovers from an infection in his toe. Timberwolves Head Coach Chris Finch said he is still day-to-day with the injury.<\/p>\n Without their best player, it was always going to be an uphill climb for the Wolves, but they came out of the gates strong, taking a double-digit lead early in the second quarter. The defense was limiting Houston\u2019s quality shots, the ball movement on offense was great, and they did a good job getting out in transition, scoring 16 fast break points in the first half.<\/p>\n The Rockets eventually whittled the Wolves\u2019 lead down to two going into the halftime break. The slim margin would hold until the early parts of the fourth quarter when Houston scored seven straight points to give them an eight-point lead, their largest lead of the game to that point.<\/p>\n Without their best player on the floor, the Wolves could not find enough effective offense down the stretch of the game, turning the ball over eight times in the fourth quarter while making only a single 3-pointer on just three fourth-quarter attempts. Minnesota fell by a final score of 110-105.<\/p>\n Julius Randle and Kevin Durant were each the offensive engines for their team, each scoring 39 points. Randle\u2019s scoring is now up to 27.7 points per game in the ten games Edwards has missed this season. Durant, like he always does, shot the ball incredibly well, going 11-18 from the field, 6-8 from beyond the arc, and 11-14 from the free-throw line.<\/p>\n Naz Reid was the other standout for the Timberwolves in the game, scoring 25 points as he made 8 of his 11 shots, including 5 makes from deep. After getting his first taste of rotation minutes<\/a> on Tuesday against the Milwaukee Bucks, Joan Beringer kept his spot in the rotation, playing a total of six minutes as the Wolves experimented with a three-big lineup with Beringer, Randle, and Reid sharing the court together.<\/p>\n The centers for each team struggled mightily from the free-throw line as Rudy Gobert went 2-10 and Alperen \u015eeng\u00fcn shot 3-9. The two teams combined to go 40-69 from the free-throw line, both leaving a good number of points available that could have swung the balance of the game.<\/p>\n While any close loss is a missed opportunity for a team like the Wolves with lofty goals, this game will not come with a ton of baggage for the Wolves. Not having Edwards available made getting a win tough against a solid and potentially desperate Houston team, which had just gotten shellacked by the Oklahoma City Thunder a night ago.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also easy to wonder how the game may have gone differently if Edwards had been able to suit up. Not having him available made it tough offensively for the Wolves against Houston\u2019s ninth-rated defense.<\/p>\n Some losses make it feel like the sky is falling. Other losses, like tonight, you can shrug your shoulders and just try to get the next one.<\/p>\n