BOSTON _ The Timberwolves didn't have to face Anthony Davis against the Pelicans on Monday and on Wednesday, they ran into a Celtics team that was without All-Star guard Kyrie Irving.
In terms of timing, the Wolves' couldn't have been better on the tail end of this road trip, getting two opponents missing their best players. But the Wolves were missing some key components of their own _ Jeff Teague, Derrick Rose and now Robert Covington.
Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins did their best to compensate for those losses, but despite eye-popping numbers from both, the Wolves still fell 115-102 to a Celtics team that shot 59 percent behind 35 points from Gordon Hayward, his second 30-plus point performance against the Wolves this season. If you only watched Hayward play the Wolves you'd have no idea he was struggling in his return from a fractured ankle. Hayward has cracked 20 points only twice this season _ and both games came against the Wolves. Towns finished with 28 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists while Wiggins had 31 points.
You could tell it was going to be a struggle for the Wolves when coach Tom Thibodeau called a timeout in the opening moments of the game. Down 4-0, Thibodeau called timeout to ream into his team for not starting with the desired energy. It wouldn't be the only timeout Thibodeau would call the remainder of the half.
Towns had trouble initially trying to score against Al Horford, one of the few big men in the league who is able to give Towns trouble in the post.
Towns finished the first half just 2-for-9 for four points, a far cry from the dominant offensive performances he has posted of late. But in the first quarter, the Wolves were able to scratch out enough buckets to keep with 25-21 of the Celtics as Josh Okogie got the start for Covington.
But the second quarter is when the wheels began to come off _ and fly down the street.
After a Gorgui Dieng jumper made the score 31-27, the Celtics took over, scoring the next 16 points. At one point when Thibodeau wanted to call a timeout, Jerryd Bayless began dribbling over to the bench to make the call. But Celtics guard Marcus Smart poked the ball away before Bayless or Thibodeau made the call. Smart finished it off with a dunk on an alley-oop at the other end of the floor. Thibodeau then got his timeout, but it didn't help much as the Wolves trailed 60-42 at the half.
The starters re-took the floor in the third quarter and refused to let the Celtics just run away with the win. Specifically, Towns got going in the third. After having just four points in the first half, he looked like his normal self in the third and then some, dishing to teammates for five assists and scoring 20 of his own.
If not for the dominance of Hayward, perhaps it would have been closer. With the Celtics needing to compensate for the loss of Irving, Hayward answered, looking like the player he was before the injury that cost him last season.
But Towns made it a game entering the fourth quarter as the Wolves trailed just 87-81. Towns took a three-minute breather and the Celtics extended their lead to 10 before Towns came back. But when Hayward re-entered the game midway through the fourth and any chance of a Wolves comeback was gone as Hayward hit a floater, a 3-pointer and found Horford for a dunk. Thibodeau called another timeout, but it didn't much help.
