Timberwolves in trouble after another lopsided loss in Game 2 in Oklahoma City

OKLAHOMA CITY – Visiting NBA teams don’t like to spend a lot of time in Oklahoma City.

It’s not a city their friends and family may visit with them, and the attractions don’t really entice them, unless somebody would really like to visit the American Banjo Museum multiple times.

When the Wolves played the second night of a back-to-back against the Thunder earlier this season, they landed around 3 a.m. for a game the next day. After playing that game, they decided it was a better idea to board another plane and fly three hours to Los Angeles than stay overnight in Oklahoma City and rest up.

Well, the Wolves might not have to spend any more time in this capital city this season, not if they keep playing the way they did in the first two games of the NBA Western Conference finals.

After getting thumped in Game 1 on Tuesday, the Wolves took it on the chin again Thursday, this time by a 118-103 score before 18,203 at Paycom Center.

To get straight to the point, this series will be over soon if the Thunder keep proving that they are capable of reaching peaks, like their third quarter of Game 2, that the Wolves just can’t match.

“We gotta be desperate,” Wolves forward Jaden McDaniels said. “Every possession matters. Every game, everything matters. We just gotta be super desperate and play smart.”

They have at times, just not as consistently as the Thunder have, and that makes the difference when a trip to the NBA Finals is on the line. For the second consecutive game, the Thunder outclassed the Wolves with an emphatic third quarter that Oklahoma City won 35-21. They were up 22 going into the fourth quarter, and though the Wolves cut it to 10 in the fourth, that was little condolence to a mostly quiet Wolves locker room.

“They’re playing all four quarters,” said guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who had 17 points off the bench. “Throughout this postseason, and I would say throughout this season, we have been able to wear teams down to where we put them away at times.

“This is a team, and we can see by their record, where you’re not going to put them away, and you kind of got to play four rounds at a time. If it’s a knockout, it’s going to be a TKO.”

McDaniels encapsulated how frustrated the Wolves were on the night when he got tangled up with Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. As the whistle blew for a foul on McDaniels, he shoved Gilgeous-Alexander to the ground, drawing a flagrant foul after review.

“I just wanted to foul him, for real. I wasn’t even mad,” McDaniels said. “I had fouls to use.”

Gilgeous-Alexander, who accepted his NBA MVP award from Commissioner Adam Silver before the game, again tortured the Wolves with 38 points, 13 coming at the free-throw line.

“Shai’s a handful to contain,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said. “When there’s contact, he’s getting around us. We got to do a better job of squaring him.”

Anthony Edwards had 32 points for the Wolves on 12-for-26 in doubling his shot attempts from Game 1. Edwards declined to speak with the media after the league fined him $50,000 for dropping a curse word in his postgame remarks from Game 1. He also added nine rebounds and six assists.

“We saw the aggressiveness from the beginning,” Finch said. “He did a good job of finding his teammates and being aggressive, getting downhill and playing quicker, quicker off the spot, picking a direction and going. Being smart in a crowd.”

But the production of each team’s supporting scorers told a story Thursday. Jalen Williams had 26 points on 12-for-20 for the Thunder while Julius Randle had his worst game of an otherwise sterling Wolves postseason with six points on 2-for-11 with four turnovers.

Chet Holmgren added 22 points for the Thunder against his hometown team.

“I got to get myself into actions, get myself on the move,” said Randle, who sat out the fourth quarter. “We know what type of defense they are. They’re going to swarm you. So I got to get myself into actions, setting screens, on the move. I think I was just standing and spectating a little too much today.”

Again, that’s where the problem is against a team like the Thunder. Wolves players, all eight of them, can’t afford to have off nights against a team like this, because when the Thunder do what they did in the third quarter, they can run the Wolves out of the gym.

The Thunder led 70-64 with four minutes, 52 seconds remaining in the third before closing on a 23-7 run to lead 93-71 entering the fourth. The Wolves committed five of their 14 turnovers in the third, and Oklahoma City converted those into 12 points. The Wolves shot 6-for-20 and 0-for-6 from three-point range. Another disaster of a quarter that began after they again bungled the end of the first half and let the Thunder score five points in the last 16.4 seconds of the period when they could have had the last shot.

“We’ve got to be able to weather that storm a little bit better,” said Wolves guard Mike Conley, who had three points, but was a plus 14. “The adversity part has been challenging, but you’ve got to find ways to limit them from turning a one- or two-possession swing into three-, four-, five-, six possession swing when it gets out of hand.”

The Wolves are a minus-60 when Conley is off the floor, even if he isn’t filling up the stat sheet.

Alexander-Walker said the Wolves found that intensity in the fourth quarter when they chipped away at the lead, but Oklahoma City scored enough to keep the Wolves from truly threatening.

“Because they’re so disciplined in the small details, we have to match that [execution]. In the fourth quarter, we matched that, we flew around, the rotations were there,” Alexander-Walker said.

“We forced some shot clock violations. They missed the mid range shots that they were making in that first half, and I think that just boils down to matching that intensity and bringing another level like they do in the third quarter.”

What changes will the Wolves have in store for Game 3? They claim to have found some positive things in the fourth quarter by playing an open offense with some pace. That might require them going to more small lineups that might cut into the minutes of Rudy Gobert (five points, nine rebounds) and Randle.

The way the Wolves trap Gilgeous-Alexander and fly around defensively to cover after he gives the ball up requires a level of energy and intensity that is missing from some of the Wolves’ bigger lineups, Conley said.

“They have to come with that same mindset and not worry so much about schemes, not worry so much about being in the right spot or wrong spot,” Conley said. “You’ve got to work for it. We’ve got to work for it right now, we’ve got to find ways to push ourselves through it.”

Or else there won’t be a return to Oklahoma City.

“They did what they came out to do, took care of home court,” Conley said. “Now we have to do the same. Game 3 is now the most important one. We’ve got to be locked in and give ourselves a chance to turn this series around.”