Sixth straight loss leads to players’ only meeting, maybe rotation changes with Timberwolves

This summer the Timberwolves warped the trade market by giving up five players and four first-round picks for Rudy Gobert, pairing him with Karl-Anthony Towns in a system that was going big while the rest of the league went small, a system that was going to take this team forward into the playoffs.

On New Year’s Eve, Minnesota got handled by a Detroit team leaning into its bench, 116-104 — that’s six straight losses and 9-of-12 for the Timberwolves, and they are 6-10 since Towns went out injured.

That led to several things, including a players-only meeting after the game.

Rudy Gobert when asked where the spirit is at right now: “We’ve got 2 options; we can sit back and feel sorry for ourselves or we can just look ahead and understand that it’s still a long season and we’ve got a lot of time left if we keep that mindset of just keep getting better"

— Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) January 1, 2023

However, the most interesting postgame quote came when Naz Reid asked if it was a mystery why the team was underachieving, via Jon Krawczynsk at The Athletic.

“Not really. We know. We know. We know why,” he said after a players-only meeting. “And you know, I’m gonna kind of keep that in house. But we know why. That’s why I said before, I feel like we can change this. We know we can change it. So we just got to buy into the things that we know.”

Okay then.

Coach Chris Finch — who has preached the same message all season but not gotten buy-in yet — said it might be time for some changes to the rotation.

Chris Finch on what he can do as a coach to improve the effort:

“Just try to be honest with them, as honest as possible. Try to up the accountability. And maybe I need to think differently about who plays when and how. Maybe I’ve just got to shuffle it up totally different.”

— Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) January 1, 2023

It’s not just one thing that’s gone wrong for the Timberwolves, it’s been Gobert taking a step back and looking tentative on defense, D’Angelo Russell being inconsistent and not being the floor general they need on offense, and then there are the fit issues everyone wondered about going back to the Gobert trade. All that said, this is a decent team when KAT has played, injuries are part of it.

The Timberwolves front office didn’t send out that massive haul of picks and players to Utah last summer to be decent when everyone is healthy. That front office is not blameless, their apparent miscalculation on how this would all fit together is at the heart of the issues as well, and with a 30-year-old Gobert having three years left on his max contract it’s not like the solution is a trade. Minnesota needs to figure it out in-house for now.

Getting Towns back will help, but much more work is needed.