As the NBA regular season winds down, the Minnesota Timberwolves are in a familiar spot, struggling to climb out of play-in positioning.
Despite hovering around the sixth seed for most of the season, Minnesota has not been able to hold a top-six standings position consistently. They’ve spent 45 days as the seventh season and only 11 days as the sixth seed or better.
Any slip-up or losing streak is difficult to overcome in a strong Western Conference. The Wolves can only control their own destiny. Minnesota’s recent losses to the short-handed Indiana Pacers and the tanking New Orleans Pelicans and Utah Jazz have not helped their cause.
The Golden State Warriors are currently ahead of the Wolves in the standings and are 13-4 since the All-Star break. They’ve looked rejuvenated after adding Jimmy Butler at the trade deadline. The Los Angeles Clippers have also won nine of their last eleven games, only tightening Minnesota’s margins.
Gaining positioning this late in the season is difficult, but fighting to avoid the play-in is not new to the Timberwolves. Their trouble making up ground in the standings this season is reminiscent of the two recent Timberwolves playoff teams.
The 2021-22 team finished 7th in the conference, spending the final 70 days of the regular season in the seventh seed, unable to overcome the Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz’s lead. After years of mediocrity, the 2021-22 Wolves were new to competitive play. Therefore, they earned a pass for their inconsistencies early in the season and their inability to make big strides in the standings. It was a building year for Minnesota.
However, the 2022-23 team had a different context. After trading for Rudy Gobert in the offseason, Minnesota entered the season with high expectations. Still, they finished eighth in the conference and had a familiar path to the playoffs. They started slow, sitting at the tenth seed at the season’s midway point. However, they played better basketball to end the regular season. They spent the final 68 days of the regular season between the six and nine seeds.
These two Timberwolves teams found a way to overcome their middling records by battling in their first-round matchups, but they didn’t have enough to win their series.
The 2021-22 team battled the Memphis Grizzlies in a six-game series. However, ultimately, their 26-point second-half blown lead in Game 3, 13-point fourth-quarter blown lead in Game 5, and playoff inexperience were their downfall. The 2022-23 team gave the champion Denver Nuggets a challenge, but they could not overcome the late-season injuries to Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels, losing the series in five games.
It’s been two years since Anthony Edwards has seen his fair share of important games as Minnesota’s No. 1 scoring option, and Gobert has been fully acclimated to its schematics. Still, they are having difficulty climbing out of the middle of the Western Conference again.
The late off-season trade that sent Karl-Anthony Towns for Donte DiVincenzo and Julius Randle changed Minnesota’s DNA. However, they are losing games in unconventional ways again.
Minnesota has continued to struggle to close games this year. It’s easy to point to specific games throughout a season or focus on the games the Wolves have lost to short-handed opponents or tanking teams. However, their inability to “find a way” in tight battles has significantly held back their season record.
The Wolves are no stranger to clutch-time games this season, leading the NBA with 43 games and 25 losses. However, they lead the NBA in games decided by three points or less, with 21 games. The Timberwolves are the only team with double-digit wins and losses; they have 11 wins and 10 losses in three-point games.
Minnesota still has a handful of favorable matchups on its remaining schedule, with two games against the Brooklyn Nets and another against the Utah Jazz. A pair of those contests are in the season’s final two games, where both opponents will likely implement nefarious tanking strategies. That will give Minnesota a platform to try to claw back toward the possibility of a sixth-seed finish.
Ultimately, Minnesota’s inability to win close games and find ways to win clutch minutes has hindered their success. A 45-plus win season is impressive. However, it’s difficult to pin its importance when they still may have to fight again to earn their playoff positioning via the play-in.