The last time these two teams met, Draymond put the Wolves into bed with a Night Night!
Last season the Minnesota Timberwolves shocked the world and romped their way to the Western Conference Finals. Along the way they dispatched the defending champion Denver Nuggets, and young star Anthony Edwards made it clear that he’s a big-time performer who deserves high praise.
Meanwhile, the Golden State Warriors didn’t even make the playoffs at all last year. They fell off of the NBA radar for the first time with a healthy Steph Curry in the fold, something that seemed impossible as recently as 2022 when they won the championship for the fourth time during the Curry era.
Now both of those teams have the same record of 14-12 as we are about a quarter of the way through the regular season.
With the doom and gloom surrounding the Warriors season, it’s almost hard to believe they even have a winning record right now.
Complete no-show from the Warriors tonight in Memphis. The final: 144-93. Largest loss of the NBA season: 51 points. Steph Curry missed all seven of his shots. Dennis Schröder 2-of-12 in his debut. The Warriors' defense has given up 287 points the last two games.
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) December 20, 2024
Warriors started 12-3 and are since 2-9
— Sam Esfandiari (@samesfandiari) December 20, 2024
The Golden State Warriors play basketball today pic.twitter.com/kDj5HZ62Cj
— Curry Flurry (@babyfacedubs) December 21, 2024
And after being blown out by 51 points to the Memphis Grizzlies in their last contest, the Warriors are looking to lick their wounds and bounce back. There’s no way this team should be getting decimated like that folks.
The Timberwolves are coming off of a frustrating loss in their own right, losing to former franchise player Karl-Anthony Towns’ new team, the New York Knicks:
The Julius Randle conundrum is a reality. As brilliant as he can be at times, he can be equally as frustrating defensively, and the warts showed once again in transition. After posting a 15-point first quarter on 5-8 shooting, he continued to keep stopping the ball on offense, and it led to some issues that widened the gap. “We’ve got to get downhill with the mentality to create for others instead of always trying to score,” Finch said. Anthony Edwards added after the game that teams know the Wolves are Julius-Ant heavy on offense. It’s predictable, and it’s going to lose more games unless a solution is come to.
Anthony Edwards said after the game that the Wolves have no offensive identity and he doesn’t know what to do about it right now. Which is fair, it’s not really his job to figure it out. But this team was in a spot earlier in the year of trading buckets with teams and not getting stops, and now it’s the complete opposite. Where is the middle ground?
Hopefully the Warriors make sure there’s no middle ground for Minnesota to gain some traction tonight.