National Basketball Association

Timberwolves exasperated after loss to previously winless Sixers

Published Dec. 4, 2014 12:05 a.m. ET

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MINNEAPOLIS -- One of the worst losses in the Timberwolves' lamentable history can be quantified.

Minnesota and Philadelphia, the last-place team in each NBA conference, each shot worse than 40 percent from the floor. They combined to make 8 of 41 3-pointers. They each turned the ball over 18 times. It was a matchup that would either tie the league's longest losing streak to start a season or add to the Wolves' infamy as the club that finally lost to the 76ers.

Which is where qualification also becomes possible. An irate Ricky Rubio -- seated behind the Wolves bench next to fellow injured players Nikola Pekovic and Ronny Turiaf -- screaming "get BACK!" after the last of Robert Covington's three fourth-quarter 3-pointers, a transition dagger. Starting center Gorgui Dieng sitting dejectedly in the locker room afterward, playing with a medical tape cutter silently before finally slicing the ice bags off his knees. Andrew Wiggins staring incredulously at a box score sheet for 30 seconds, trying to make sense of a dubious juncture in his young career and the start of an era he's supposed to usher in.

All pointed toward the previously unthinkable that took place Wednesday night. The latest Sixers futility streak came to an end, and it came against a Minnesota team that added another clunker to the junk heap it's compiled the past 26 years.

"No one wanted to be 'that' team," Wiggins said after his team's 85-77 loss.

But, "We were 'that' team," power forward Thaddeus Young said.

That team was the first to lose to Philadelphia in another year where Sixers brass is content to stockpile draft picks and gun for another by finishing in a favorable draft lottery position. Young himself is in the Twin Cities by virtue of that philosophy, sent over in the Kevin Love trade which netted Philadelphia a 2015 first-round pick from Cleveland and a pair of former Wolves benchwarmers in Alexey Shved and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.

A group with just one player -- Mbah a Moute -- with more than two years of NBA experience was a loss away from tying the league's worst start to a season. It played with a feistiness that outmatched Minnesota's, but it didn't play well, shooting just 39 percent (20.8 from 3-point range) and looking completely discombobulated for stretches, as it has in most games this season.

But for the first time this season, someone else matched the Sixers' ineptitude.

"That's what makes it bad," forward Corey Brewer said. "They play that bad, and we still lose?

"We can't lose that game. Period."

The Wolves (4-13) shot 35.7 percent. They made three 3-pointers on 17 attempts. For much of the game, they were overwhelmed on the boards. They couldn't take care of the ball. They couldn't hit a big shot in the fourth, and they couldn't come up with a timely stop, either.

Young scored 16 points against his former team. Dieng had a double-double with 15 points and 16 rebounds. But Wiggins, honored Wednesday as the Western Conference rookie of the month for November, was the only starter who didn't commit at least four turnovers.

Covington's final triple made it 81-77 with 1:15 left. The Wolves, who had come back from down 12 earlier in the night, turned the ball over on a Mo Williams offensive foul and missed their final three 3-point attempts.

The game had to be restarted more than a minute in after officials realized they'd tipped the ball off with the teams facing the wrong direction.

Minnesota could've used a few more mulligans.

Williams started at point guard despite having a bad back; trainers checked him out every time he left the floor for a breather. Any other night, he wouldn't have played, coach and president of basketball operations Flip Saunders said.

But this was Philadelphia (1-17) -- a team even injury-riddled, rebuilding Minnesota was favored to beat.

"We're not a very good team right now," Saunders said.

Exasperated and at a near loss for words, Saunders' only feasible explanation was a lack of urgency.

"We're back to square one," said Saunders, whose team now plays West contenders Houston, San Antonio, Golden State and Portland in the next week. "As I told the guys, it can't get worse. You look at our schedule coming up, it's not pretty.

"It might get uglier before it gets better. We're so undermanned that some guys have to play; well, they're playing, and they're making mistakes. We can't keep on having guys make the same mistakes, because if they make them, they're going to have to sit."

Maybe even worse.

"I'd like to do some stuff I used to do in college," said Saunders, who ran notoriously tiring practices at Golden Valley Lutheran College in the late 1970s. "I don't know if I can do that in the NBA, but we'll see. I'll think about it tonight."

A sparse crowd of 10,463 booed the Wolves repeatedly.

Brewer said he and his teammates deserved it.

"We've got to understand," the eighth-year veteran said, "we're not that good."

The catcalls come from a fan base that's endured a 10-year playoff drought, the league's longest active one. They've watched the club go from fledgling expansion franchise to perennial playoff contender under Kevin Garnett back to one of the league's floundering organizations. Poor draft picks, questionable trades and mismanagement at every level have earned the Wolves all kinds of deplorable labels.

They added another one Wednesday night.

It's one game. But it will be lumped in with much more than that.

"It better open our eyes," Brewer said. "If it doesn't open our eyes, we're going to get beat every night."

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