Timberwolves at Wizards
The Minnesota Timberwolves look great in spurts but struggle to put together 48 minutes representative of the talent level of the players. The Washington Wizards, who host the Timberwolves on Friday, have their own problems with consistency but are winners of eight in a row at home.
Minnesota fell behind by 26 points at Philadelphia on Tuesday, came all the way back to tie it with 1.6 seconds left and lost on a buzzer-beater 93-91. "That has been our biggest challenge, to be a 48-minute team," Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau told reporters, "and we’re nowhere near that." The Wizards, who took a two-game trip to Texas and fell at Houston and Dallas on Monday and Tuesday after pulling to .500 with a three-game home winning streak, begin a stretch of five of seven at home with Friday's tilt. “We’re still in a position where we’re happy, but this is not the way you want to start 2017,” Washington point guard John Wall told reporters. “We know what we have to do to win games. When we don’t do it, we’re putting ourselves in a tough disadvantage."
TV: 7 p.m. ET, FSN North (Minnesota), CSN Mid-Atlantic (Washington)
ABOUT THE TIMBERWOLVES (11-24): Minnesota looked like it was taking a step forward with a stretch of five wins in nine games - capped by a 116-99 win over Milwaukee - but since dropped two in a row to sub-.500 opponents. Star center Karl-Anthony Towns recorded his fifth straight double-double on Tuesday with 23 points and 15 rebounds but was upset that his team could not complete the comeback. “You don’t get no consolation, there are no consolation prizes,” Towns told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "This ain’t fourth-grade, pee-wee football. This is the NBA. This is a man’s league. There’s a winner and there’s a loser, and today we were the losers."
ABOUT THE WIZARDS (16-18): Washington is in the bottom third of the league in scoring defense and allowed the lowly Mavericks to bury 17 3-pointers on Tuesday. "We got outworked. I haven’t said that a lot about this team, but we got outworked," Wizards coach Scott Brooks told reporters. "They were moving the ball, and we were hoping that they would miss and not doing a very good job of making them miss." One positive on the trip was the play of shooting guard Bradley Beal, who sat out last Friday with an ankle injury but played both nights of the back-to-back and averaged 26 points.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Wizards SF Otto Porter Jr. is 19-of-38 from 3-point range in the last seven games.
2. Timberwolves SG Andrew Wiggins failed to score in double figures for the second time this season when he managed eight points on 2-of-15 shooting Tuesday.
3. Minnesota earned a 132-129 double-overtime win in its lone trip to Washington last season.