Was it really less just a few days ago that the Minnesota Timberwolves seemed primed to make a serious push up the Western Conference standings for the first time in this season? 

The Wolves had won a season-high five straight games to close out January with a  record of 27-21, just a half-game out of 6^th place that would provide them with a hall pass to skip the play-in tournament and avoid the ignominy of potentially not even qualifying for the postseason. Better yet, they were just a game-and-a-half out of 4^th place, a spot that would ensure home-court advantage for the first round of the playoffs. 

Seven of their next eight games were at home, the first three against eminently beatable opponents, beginning with the Washington Wizards, owner of the worst record in the NBA and in the midst of their second 16-game losing streak of the season. Then a day off and a matchup against the Sacramento Kings, a team whose star player, De’Aaron Fox, had enervated the franchise by asking for a trade. Another day off and then a contest with a Chicago Bulls squad who had won just two of its previous 10 games. 

Even the ever wary and weary Wolves fans had to concede there was an available window that just might permit some sunshine to permeate their dusky hopes. 

Hah.

It was suddenly time for the remarkable good health the Wolves enjoyed for most of the past two seasons to go kaput. That strained groin muscle forward Julius Randle had pulled 10 minutes into the game against the Utah Jazz to close out January was going to keep him on the sidelines for a while. And superstar guard Anthony Edwards, who didn’t miss a game in calendar year 2024, was hollowed out of the picture by an illness. 

Randle and Ant were added to the absence of guard Donte DiVincenzo, hobbled by a torn ligament in his big toe back in late January. And then Naz Reid jammed his fingers in the first half against the Wizards and became the last of the Wolves’ top four scorers to tap out of action. 

OK, but the Wizards were still posed to be an inconsequential obstacle, eh? Six wins in 47 games. Not one, but two 16-game losing streaks already this season. Yeah, the Wolves had played cat-and-mouse with them, grabbing the lead for only 49 seconds near the end of the first half, but never really letting the game get out of hand. And when Minnesota went on a 16-5 run in the fourth quarter to go up by three with 7:27 left to play, the natural order of things re-clicked into focus.  

For a brief moment. Then the downtrodden Wizards stirred for a 9-0 run of their own to make it 99-93 with just a little under four minutes left to play. They never trailed again, icing the victory when forward Kyle Kuzma twice isolated on the Wolves best on-ball defender, Jaden McDaniels, and turned both possessions into buckets. 

Then the Kings came to town, reeling from the announcement that Fox had indeed been traded just hours before, too soon for the players Sacramento had acquired in the deal to make it to Minnesota. Rotation player Kevin Huerter had also been dealt. 

As for the Wolves, Ant was suited up and mostly ready to go. Naz, his jammed fingers taped, was alongside him in the starting lineup. Rudy Gobert, Mike Conley and McDaniels filled out a quintet that logged 200 minutes together as a unit last season, allowing just 102.1 points scored per 100 possessions. But the short-handed, in-transition Kings scored at a rate of 177.8 points per 100 possessions before the first wave of substitutions arrived a little more than nine minutes into the game. 

But once again the score stayed agonizingly close into the fourth quarter, the teams separated by no more than six points in the final five minutes. And once again the Wolves stumbled – the final was 116-114, Sacramento. 

Citing “bad chemistry” for a team’s underperformance is usually the hallmark of lazy analysis. “Chemistry” itself is an ineffable and elusive thing that is prone to a wide array of definitions. I regard good chemistry as a synergy, a cohesion greater than the sum of its parts, arising from a shrewd assembly of complementary pieces that are further catalyzed by shared confidence, faith and trust. The less those elements exist, the more likely it is that the synergy will be stymied.

Do the Wolves suffer from poor chemistry? If you examine how the team performs when it matters most, the answer is yes. 

The NBA defines “clutch” situations as the times when the teams are within five points of each other in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime. It is when the outcome of the game is more or less a tossup, there for the taking – or the giving away. 

Over their first 50 games of the 2024-25 season, amounting to a total of 2,410 minutes played, the Wolves have outscored their opponents by 151 points. They have been pretty consistent in earning that advantage, going plus 36 in the first quarter, plus 39 in the second quarter, plus 35 in the third quarter, and plus 43 in the fourth quarter. They are minus 2 in their two five minutes (10 total) of overtime. 

Too often, however, they fall apart in the clutch. 

Specifically, in 107 minutes of clutch play, they have been outscored by 55 points. Remember, by definition, clutch minutes can only occur near the end of the fourth quarter or overtime, which makes the disparity in the team’s performance with the game on the line rather than when the pressure is less intense, even more dramatic. 

Here’s the math: Overall, the Wolves outscore their opponents by 41 points in the 610 minutes comprising their 50 fourth quarters and two overtimes. But since they are outscored by 55 in the 107 clutch minutes, that means they outscore the other team by 96 points in the 503 minutes of their fourth quarters and overtimes that aren’t clutch situations. 

Failing to deliver in the clutch has had a significant impact on the course of their season. Thirty-one of the Wolves’ first 50 games this season have included some clutch minutes – the most in the NBA. The Wolves’ record in those games is 13-18, compared to their 14-5 mark in the 29 games that aren’t close near the end of the game. They lead the NBA with 13 losses in games in which they have led in the fourth quarter.

Because the clutch minutes vary from game-to-game, blinking off when a team pulls away by more than five points (and back on if the narrow margin returns), the Wolves are tied for fifth in the 30-team league for the sheer amount of clutch minutes at 107. The sample sizes vary wildly – from the mere 35 minutes logged by the terrible Wizards and the 48 minutes teams are able to contest the dominant Thunder, to the 117 minutes played in the clutch by the Houston Rockets. Consequently, offensive and defensive ratings (the amount of points scored and allowed per possession) can be skewed.

That said, in their relatively robust sample size, the Wolves rank 24^th in defensive rating, allowing 116.8 points per 100 possessions, and 27^th in offensive rating, scoring just 100.5 points per 100 possessions. Their net rating – points scored minus points allowed per 100 possessions – of -16.3, is better (or less worse) than only the Wizards and the Utah Jazz, the two teams with the worst overall won-lost records in the NBA. 

Put simply, the two teams who perform worse than the Wolves in the clutch perform terribly in a lot of non-clutch time as well. In fact, among the bottom nine teams in clutch-time net rating, only the Wolves have a winning record overall. (The Milwaukee Bucks, 21^st is clutch net rating at minus 6.9, but with an overall record of 26-22, is the next worst clutch performer among “winning” teams.) 

On a team-wide basis in the clutch, the Wolves are grossly underperforming the rest of the league and their own non-clutch play at both ends of the court, which is why this feels like the fault extends not only to the players logging the most clutch time, but to the way President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly has constructed the team and the way Coach Chris Finch has operated it. 

That said, Edwards is the team’s unquestioned go-to star when it matters most and his performance on offense reflects the team’s incompetence at that end. For example, the Wolves overall shooting percentage and accuracy from three-point range both take a dive in clutch situations. They are 46.3% shooters from the field overall (16^th in the NBA) and 40.7% in the clutch (22^nd). And from behind the arc, they fall from 38.3% accuracy overall (3^rd best) to 25.3% (28^th) with the pressure on. 

As the dominant locus of the offense, it is not surprising that Ant (who has logged 102.5 of the 107 clutch minutes, missing only the Wizards game due to illness), is likewise tumbling, from 44.6% overall to 39.4% in the clutch from the field, and from 42.1% overall to 28.2% in the clutch from long range. 

There is a lot more to be said about clutch minutes – Naz has just two three-point attempts, missing both, in his 23.6 clutch minutes and owns a ridiculously skewed net rating of minus 43.9. Conley is 2-13 from the floor and 1-8 from three-point territory in his 46.3 clutch minutes, yet he only played clutch minutes in 17 games and the Wolves were 10-7 and a mere minus 4 in plus/minus during his time on the court.

My take on the clutch minutes fiasco is that it is a symptom of the Wolves lack of chemistry thus far this season, in which dysfunction has made them less than the sum of their parts. And there are a lot of reasons why it has occurred. 

Begin with the major trade that happened just before training camp. I don’t disagree with it, for reasons discussed in multiple prior columns, but the timing was harmful. It disrupted the unique harmony Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns had created (designed by Finch) in the “double-bigs” lineup. It compelled not only the readjustment of supplanting Karl-Anthony Towns with Randle as the starting power forward, but altered the way Naz, McDaniels, Conley and even Joe Ingles would be deployed. 

Another reason why the Wolves aren’t thriving in pressure situations this season is because there is more ambient pressure on them in general. Last year’s 56-win campaign was a season-long party, made even more piquant by its unexpected excellence. This season, the team entered with the NBA’s second-highest salary, including big raises kicking in for Ant and McDaniels, plus an extension for Gobert. Randle and Naz have player option years on the table next season. 

The overall expectation was, if not a return to the Western Conference Finals, a standard of play that was among the elites in the conference. The fan base had a taste of consistently marvelous play, ticket prices spiked. Ant was supposedly “the face of the NBA.” It was, and is, a lot. 

Then there is the deployment of personnel. To accelerate familiarity and quicken research, Finch hewed to an eight player rotation, and even with the recent onslaught of injuries and absences, leans in that direction. But the grizzled veterans Conley and Gobert, both stellar pros who deserve respect, are having off-years and don’t deliver as reliably, especially in the clutch. 

Meanwhile, first-round lottery pick Rob Dillingham has shown enormous promise – and inconsistency. Finch, under the same gun of delivering last season’s caliber of play, plays tug of war with his support and faith. Josh Minott had an excellent preseason, barely played the first couple months, and is now in the doghouse for defensive lapses. Luka Garza has been “developing” forever but isn’t reliable. Right now Jaylen Clark is the development success story because Finch prioritizes ball pressure and he’s been delivering. 

There is, of course, a chicken-or-egg quandary to young player development. Can the Wolves sustain expectations and capably bring these bright talents along? That’s tough under any circumstances and particularly thorny at the moment, when injuries open the rotation but provide a narrower margin for success. 

Already this season we have had the notorious spat when Randle wouldn’t deliver the ball to Gobert and Rudy pouted and acted out; Ant calling out his team for lackluster play just before Thanksgiving, and Finch caustically getting on his troops after a losing streak in January. In all of these cases, the team rebounded admirably. It remains a collection of high-character individuals. Folks in limbo, like Randle, Naz, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Joe Ingles, have been pros willing to adapt to uncomfortable changes. 

But adjusting to those changes hinders synergy. Ditto injuries, which, to be fair, the Wolves have mostly been lucky with the past couple seasons. Ditto the pressure of repeating last year’s standard. The NBA is rife with teams that made a leap and then took a step back. 

The wider lens is that all this can change, in a blink or inexorably, until you see the blooms. Just a few days ago, the Wolves seemed primed for an 8-game winning streak. Now it is comparatively bleak. But this too could change. 

We’ll know it has if they suck it up in the clutch and begin winning tossups.

Britt Robson

Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.

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