It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. This is Corbin Smith from the Lockdown Seahawks Podcast. January, are you ready to rock? Set the stage for a killer 2025 with Dave's killer bread. Get the whole grain nutrition and awesome organic ingredients you need to rock your reset. Throughout January, we'll be delivering weekly epic prompt text alerts to our SMS subscribers plus new sign-ups who opt in through the sweepstakes offer to next reset to 73876. Enter for a chance to win three VIP concert prize packs. No purchase necessary visit Dave's killer bread.com/reset for details. Wherever you spend your game day, remember, it pays to discover. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report, learn more at discover.com/creditcard. Hello, welcome in to another episode of Lockdown Wolves against the Pistons on Saturday night, Anthony Edwards with a career high of 53 points and the Wolves lose. Oh yeah, we've reached that part of the season. We'll talk about why the sky just might be falling now. We'll talk about Wolves Clippers tonight. Welcome in. Welcome to our Lockdown Wolves. You are locked on Timber Wolves, your daily Minnesota Timber Wolves Podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome to Lockdown Wolves Podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. My name is Ben Beacon. I'm the host of Lockdown Wolves. Today's episode is brought to us by Fandal. From big upsets to game-winning drives, the NFL playoffs are better with Fandal. New customers could bet $5 and get 200 bucks in bonus bets guaranteed win or lose. Visit Fandal.com to get started. Happy Monday, everybody. It is a Timber Wolves game day that we'll stick on the Clippers tonight, but first we have to address the debacle that was Saturday night in Detroit. When Anthony Edwards scored 53, he was a career high, and if you weren't following the game, he saw the pushes from your NBA app or your ESPN app. You saw that Ant had a career high, was, you know, had 26 1/2 down, whatever. You probably assumed, which would be reasonable, that the Wolves were playing great. They did not play great. They got beat by a very, albeit playing better, but mediocre, pissing the team, missing Jaden Ivy on the second night of a back-to-back, handily on Saturday night. We'll talk about that first. We'll talk about, I'll do some studs and duds, we'll kind of breeze through some of the actual game stuff, because this is just a, I guess, a symptom of an ongoing and larger problem for the Wolves or, I don't know, that may not be the right way to say it. But clearly there's some issues that have been going on for a while. And we talked about on the show, but now, like, are things coming to a head now that we're back at a 500 record, or is this like, hey, you flush it and you move on? As like, I don't know. Let's talk about that. And we'll get into Wolves Clippers tonight, too. It's been a little bit since we've seen LA. So that's all coming on the show, a big thank you off the top for making the show your first listen. Of course, you can listen anywhere. You can also watch on YouTube as well as the Lockdown Sports Minnesota app, which you can find in both Roku and Amazon Fire TV and a quick reminder about the new daily Lockdown Wolves newsletter. You can subscribe at LockdownDaily.com. It's one stop for Ultimate Team in League coverage delivered right to your inbox Monday through Friday at LockdownDaily.com. All right, so Wolves going to the Pistons game on Saturday night, having lost a couple games in a row. And like the tone of this podcast last week was generally pretty positive because look, the Wolves last week played the thunder tough. They played the Celtics to the final possession and had a chance to tie in an Anthony Edwards three at the buzzer. If the Wolves win that game, even if they lose to Detroit, I bet these vibes are not quite so sour. Remember, a week ago, one week ago, we were talking about a three game winning streak, including a Christmas day, went over the maps, a nice win over the Rockets and beating when be in the Spurs. One week ago, this was a lot more positive and then they lose to two of the three best teams in the entire NBA and OKC and Boston, perfectly defensible, reasonable losses. And again, the Celtics game easily could have been an overtime loss or an overtime win for that matter. And then they fall apart on Saturday and here we are right back to where we were two weeks ago after the Wolves had another, you know, just prior to Christmas, the Wolves had another three game losing streak. That's the game we've been playing this season. Remember, there was the four game losing streak, you know, back, actually it ended with the win over the Clippers, what, like, around Thanksgiving. Then there was the three game losing streak right before Christmas. And then there was a three game winning streak and a week ago, everything's feeling OK. And now you got another three game losing streak. So I do want to preface all of what I'm about to say. I think this is a reasonable thing to point out while the manner in which they lost the Pistons was bad and I will address it and it was bad. I'm not at all discounting that. And absolutely, the Wolves sitting at 500 right after New Year's Day is not at all where any of us thought they'd be and I would certainly consider this year a disappointment to this point. No question about it. Remember, the Wolves went from mid November, I'm going to pull the exact date here until January 4th without playing a team below 500 November 21st was the last time they played a team that was below 500 when they played them. And at the time they were eight and seven coming into the Pistons game, they were game above 500. So they played a really tough schedule to a 500 record, which is still not good enough. But I mean, look at the look at the murderers row they played over the last couple of weeks, right? I mean, like, even if you want to take out the Lakers, fine, when you go wind be nicks, there's three Warriors games in there. And then Atlanta was obviously a bad loss and the Dallas Houston, San Antonio. Okay. See Boston, you finally get to try it. Now you're at 500, but the schedule doesn't really lighten up. You get the Pelicans who actually just won, but you get the Pelicans on a back-to-back on Tuesday night. And then you have this like resurgent Orlando, short-handed Orlando team. And then you get Memphis, New Orleans and Washington are mixed in there, but given the way they lost to Detroit, you don't actually feel that great looking head. So let's talk about the Pistons game. The wolves lose this game by 14. They never looked ready to play. The defense was atrocious. They give up 119 points to a Pistons team with no J and IB. They allowed Detroit to score 58 points in the paint, Minnesota only had 34. And the rebounding I think is, is you could just circle that category. That's all that, it's not all that matters. But that is an indicator for how this game went. Minnesota was a minus 14 on the glass. They give up 13 offensive rebounds to Detroit. And they gave up 58 points in the paint. The defense, period on the perimeter in the paint, was awful for Minnesota. And a couple of weeks ago, it was the only thing that was working. Minnesota was all the way up to like fourth in defense, again, now they're down to like ninth in defense league what? And the rebounding, it's not simply about, our guys are bigger than you and we're going to box you out. We're going to get a bunch of defensive rebounds. No, it's about effort. And there's obviously multiple parts to rebounding. There's, there's technique, there's, there's the fundamentals of boxing out, understanding where rebounds are likely to be given the angles of the shots and all that stuff. And then there's also just playing hard. And that's what this was on Saturday. These dudes on the Timberwolves did not want to play basketball on Saturday night. They did not look like they wanted to play. We'll talk about the exception of Anthony Edwards, because I know the lazy narrative would be to look at the box. I know he had 53 and two assists, man, it must have been a selfish 53. No, his teammates didn't want to be there. His teammates didn't want to play basketball on Saturday night. It just did not look like a team that, that like those rebounds, so many of those were 50, 50 balls. And I talk about this all the time and it's been one of the biggest issues for this team this season. And a little bit last year too, when they had stretches where they struggled defensive rebounding wise, it's not rebounding around the rim and it's not even necessarily like long rebounds. It's not like back when Andrew Wiggins would leak out and not even bother to try rebounding, you know, but going back several years now, I'm talking about the intermediate stuff. Like the rebounds that are landing basically at the free throw line, 15 feet away from the basket, which become 50, 50 balls. And nobody's prepping, you know, unless you, there are some teams like you can scheme up our guys in the wing are going to, you know, we're expecting these longer rebounds. We're more concerned with the defensive rebounds than we are about anything else about getting out in transition and trying to scheme guys to the elbows for rebounds. That's a pretty rare thing to do in the NBA. Like most teams are not doing that because you'd rather get the easy bucket in transition and understandably that's what the wolves are trying to do. So then what happens is there's no one there. It's no man's land. It becomes a 50 50 ball. That rebound that's bouncing at the free throw line extended across the floor. That is just a tip pass at mid court that that is a, it is a loose ball. That's a 50 50 ball. And then it's all about effort and I don't care who it is, look up and down the roster and find me. Someone that gave that effort. Josh Bonnet was sick. You know, he would have thought that even Chenzo did during the last homestand, but we didn't necessarily see that from him on Saturday. And I don't mean to single out Dante. I'm just saying last game him and mine out were the ones that provided the energy back at target center. Mine it was sick. He wasn't playing nobody provided the energy in this game. That was actually a little bit energetic defensively. And I mean, we've seen that before when ant gets going offensively, feeds into his defense and the effort levels there. Not always the way it will not really ever the way it should work, but I'm not saying and played hard on Saturday, but we'll talk about his game here in a minute. I thought he played great. The two assists kind of, I think, belies how well he actually passed the basketball in this game. I thought he was much more decisive and I ripped on him last week about not being decisive enough. That being a primary issue, even though they were winning these games and I guess they lost OKC and Boston. But after the, I think it was the loss on Thursday to Boston, where I talked a lot about the lack of decisiveness from ant and that being an issue, I thought he was decisive on Saturday. And that led to 53, a bunch of hockey assists and a bunch of would be assist if the dudes around him could make shots. And I know the wolves ended up 40% from three, but don't just look at the team's shooting percentage or team's three point percentage. Look at the fact that everybody not named Anthony Edwards was a combined six of 25 from outside the arc. That's like 23ish percent. It's under, it's under 25%. Nobody on the team. Only one guy on the team made more than five shots that was named Anthony Edwards Julius was six of 12. Nobody else attempted more than eight besides Randall. Nobody else had made more than five. Randall made six or a bunch of guys that made two or three shots might call he didn't make a single shot. The wolves only played eight guys in this game with no dealing ham out injured, no mine out out sick. They played an eight man rotation and only one of those eight guys look like he wanted to be on the basketball court on Saturday night. We'll talk a little bit about ants game. I'll do a quick studs and duds, although it'll be a short one because you could basically rack everybody up under the duds category. And then I want to talk about wolves clippers coming up here tonight. We'll do all that here next. Today's episode of lockdown. Wolves is brought to us by our friends over at prize picks basketball season is heating up. Now football is winding down. We're getting into the playoffs. 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I mean, like for instance, if you take an ant more than 27 points on Saturday night, you would have been looking pretty, pretty good with prize picks flex play option. Even if one of your picks doesn't hit, you can still double your money plus once you hit, you can get your money fast sometimes as quick as 15 minutes. It's honestly the best way to keep the game exciting. Now is the perfect time to join down with the app today. Use the code lock that MBA to get $50 instantly when you play your first $5 lineup. That's right. No need to win to get the bonus. It's guaranteed prize picks. Run your game. This is Corbin Smith from the lockdown Seahawks podcast January. Are you ready to rock? Set the stage for a killer 2025 with Dave's killer bread. Set the whole grain nutrition and awesome organic ingredients you need to rock your reset throughout January will be delivering weekly epic prompt text alerts to our SMS subscribers plus new signups who opt in through the sweepstakes offer to next reset to 73876 and for a chance to win three VIP concert prize packs, no purchase necessary visit Dave's killer bread.com/recept for details. All right, let's talk quickly about Ants game and oh, by the way, I should just put like a bow on the like more ambiguous like effort based I guess dramatic take from this game. I have on the graphic during the side that I neglected to put up earlier in the show. It was a stomach turning loss because it was all effort based. We talked about the lineup stuff and I do this in between games all the time. We'll do it later this week, undoubtedly. I talked last week quite a bit about, hey, look, the starting lineup, the good lineup of the bench trio plus Josh Minut and Julius Randall as the fifth guy. That is the ticket to this team playing better and you can play Ants as that fifth guy fine, but like I think the bigger thing is it's the starting lineup as currently constructed is not working. And I know Chris Finch said post game on Saturday that it's not a magic bullet. I don't think anyone thinks it is a magic bullet. I'm not saying you change the starting line if you're going to go back to your winning ways. The point is the more minutes you play a combination that clearly is not working and we are nearly at the half. We're like 40 plus percent of the way through the season. We'll be at the halfway market two weeks, games wise, schedule wise. Clearly it's not working and I'm not saying you can never play those five together. That's not possible. You have to. But maybe it's the first six minutes need to be somebody else to get this team off to a different combination to get this team off to a better start. Maybe it's in and clearly in recent weeks, Chris Finch has adjusted the crunch time lineup. It wasn't simply, we'll push the starter button, you know, we'll do the auto subgroup like on two K and put in the starters at the end of the game. Like we like we start the game with he's thankfully went away from that a couple of weeks ago and that's worked out pretty well, whether it's Dante or, you know, usually Dante occasionally to keel, you know, in that closing lineup, sometimes Nas. But why does that same starting five have to start together? I understand that there's politics involved to understand Julius is an NBA all star last or was a all star last season. He's the return for cat get it, whatever, but you're 17 and 17. Something's got to change. On Saturday, Anthony Edwards was the only bright spot and it was a pretty decent 53 points. There were certainly some, you know, he had six turnovers, I get it. But don't be, don't be concerned with the only two assists. Again, if you didn't watch the game, trust me, he should have had five, six, seven assists. If dudes just made open shots, he definitely had five or six hockey assists. He had one really early in the game where Nikille had an open three and then there were like three more that Nikille just missed like wide open attempts that aunt generated with his gravity with his quick decision making. He dribbled into a couple because he was trying to force things because why wouldn't you? When you're shooting the ball, I mean, he shot better than 50% from the field. So we could talk about like, Hey, he shot the ball. It's on. Yeah, he made more than half his shots. He was 10 of 15, 67% from outside the arc and he was 11 at 12 at the line. The dude was shooting the ball really well and he should have had more than two assists. Ant was not the reason for this loss and I don't know that anybody would say he is, but I, it was not a bad 53. If you didn't watch the game and you just said, Oh, you had 53 joyous and 17, no one else had more than nine and it must have just held the ball. Well, yeah, cause nobody else could make a shot when he passed it to him. And not only that, nobody else was playing hard and Anthony never rebut. I don't think he had a rebound in the first half. The finish was six. So like, Ant is sometimes culpable for that stuff too, but after a game like this, you cannot blame Anthony Edwards. And I was blaming him last week for some of the issues in the OKC embossing games because when you play teams like that, when your role players play well enough, like a Dante or a Josh mine out or whatever, you need to get more from your star. If you're going to beat other star players like an SGA or Jason Tatum and they didn't get that from Ant last week, but Ant showed up in this game, nobody else came as well. It's like they when he got had 26 at halftime, they're just like, all right, well, it's going to carry us the rest of the way. That's not what happened. I mean, he tried, but to give up 119 points and 58 paint points and almost 49% shooting to the Pistons without Jay Nivey. I know the Pistons are 500 his team. They've won seven of eight or whatever, but second night of a back to back, like no excuse. You can't lose by 14 on the road to the Pistons like this. It's just, it's not not good and I thought played well. I'm not going to sit here and blame Anthony Edwards for anything about this game. I should mention I said this, I guess in the, well, the lockdown video I did Saturday night, but Kate had Kate Cunningham had 40 points on 29 shots was awesome for the Pistons. The wolves didn't really have a solution for him, which is goofy because like, I mean, who else is going to score with no Jay Nivey like Beasley had 20 throughout the bench, classic Malik Beasley revenge game. We saw that when he was with Utah, we saw it when he was with Minnesota against Denver, like, shouldn't be surprising that Malik Beasley had a big game off the bench. I'm a little surprised we didn't get window more junior revenge off the bench. He didn't play it all after he started on Friday night in the Pistons game. He didn't play at all against the wolves on Saturday, but anyway, quickly studs and studs, answers stud. Julius Randall was okay, but he didn't really come to the party. I think he had a bucket in the first time. He had two at halftime, not a stud. I mean, he was actually, if you want to play the plus minus game, he was a minus 20. Julius Randall was. I don't think he played all that, all that well in this game, despite he had 17, seven and six and at least somebody else showed up at some point. Everyone else, I've ever done this before. Everybody else had done in this game. Nobody played well. Rudy was especially bad. Rudy go bare had a very bad game, 6.6 rebounds, which I know looks like it's similar to his box score from the other night, but he was actively worse than he was. I think it was the Boston game where he had a similar looking line, but I don't think he played that badly. He just failed to protect the paint badly on multiple occasions, bad spacing offensively, bad timing on trying to get lobs and just not only two offensive rebounds at 30 minutes, just a bad Rudy game. He gets it done in this one. I'm going to say Nikhil. I know Nikhil played hard and I, you know, Nikhil was one of the few guys that actually did look like he was playing hard, but he missed way too many open threes when the game was still in the balance. So he gets it done in this game. And Mike Conley, just, just really bad for Conley. And the thing is the wolves can't not play Mike Conley. They don't have another point guard, especially now with doing him hurt. So Mike Conley is going to be in the rotation all season long and he may only play 25 minutes a game, but he's not going anywhere. He's just got to play better. He can't shoot floaters anymore. He just can't do it. He tried one in this game and missed badly, missed three threes like he still needs to be on the floor to run the offense and to knock down, hopefully not done open threes. I do think he'll ultimately still shoot a little bit of a better percentage from deep, but the floater clearly the wrist is bothering him enough that he just can't make floaters anymore. So I'd say Conley, Rudy and Nikhil as duds in this game in bigger picture. This is something we can cover later in the week. And I've said this like if I had to pick one thing besides the whole like trying to figure out the Randall fit, I would say Jane McDaniels is the biggest. I don't mean to just like, I'm going to do this, but I didn't intend to just like throw this in there as like a grenade and then walk away and not cover it the rest of the show. We'll talk about later in the week. I promise Jane McDaniels, the biggest concern to me. I think he's been the most overrated Tim Will for a while and I'm not saying they shouldn't have extended him because it's one of those like, how do you not? It's like the Wiggins rookie. It's not the same, but it's similar to the Wiggins rookie extension where it's like that you remember the Glenn Taylor look him in the eye thing. You kind of got to do it with Jane McDaniels, but now what? If you didn't develop him any further, if the other stuff, the offensive stuff hasn't clicked, if the effort isn't always there enough defensively, if they're not getting into fall trouble thing hasn't clicked, which was an issue early in this game. Where do you go from here with Jane McDaniels? To me, that's the biggest concern. I know they got to make a decision with Randall and Nas and Alexander Walker, but I would be most worried about the money committed to Jane McDaniels and the lack of improvement that he's given you. And I'd even include last year. I know he was second team all defense, but offensively he progressed and he's gotten, I think, worse in a lot of ways this year. So that is a problem here moving forward. All right. Let's talk about wolves, clippers and peek ahead. We'll do that here next. Today's episode of Lockdown Wolves is brought to us by our title sponsors at Fandil. From big upsets to game winning drives, the NFL playoffs are better with Fandil and the playoffs get started this Saturday. Right now, new customers can bet $5 and get $200 in bonus bets guaranteed. That's $200 in bonus bets win or lose. The Fandil app gives you everything you need for live bets, same game parlays and so much more. So playoffs NFL playoffs start this Saturday and there's three games Saturday. There's two games Sunday and there's one game Monday night. So plenty to look forward to football wise. You want to talk about the wolves, the wolves are, of course, in action tonight at home against the clippers and they are three point favorites, which surprises me a little. We'll talk with the matchup next, but Kawhi is expected to play. He played for the first time on Saturday. The wolves are three point favorites at home against the clippers on Monday night. So yeah, check that out. And then the wolves play again Tuesday, by the way, their first back to back in a little while. So we'll talk about that line on tomorrow's show visit Fandil.com to join today. Get started with $200 in bonus bets. Fandil.com make this playoff season unforgettable with Fandil, an official sports book partner of the NFL. This is Corbin Smith from the lockdown Seahawks podcast January. Are you ready to rock? Set the stage for a killer 2025 with Dave's killer bread. Get the whole grain nutrition and awesome organic ingredients. You need to rock your reset throughout January will be delivering weekly epic prompt text alerts to our SMS subscribers plus new signups who opt in through the sweepstakes offer. To next reset to seven, three, eight, seven, six, enter for a chance to win three VIP concert vice packs. No purchase necessary. Visit Dave's killer Brad.com slash reset for details. All right, wolves clippers tonight from target center. As mentioned a moment ago on Fandil, it's in wolves are three point favorites at home against LA, which is a little bit surprising given the fact that quite Leonard isn't on the injury report as of me recording this on Sunday evening. So Kawhi should play. He played for the first time all season on Saturday and had 12 points in limited minutes. He played, I think like basically 20 minutes. I wanted to play 19 minutes on Saturday had 12 points, three of five print three shot four of 11 from the field. So Kawhi should play on Monday. There's nobody else in the injury report for the Clippers. This is a healthy Clippers team that have been playing well here recently. They beat the Hawks on Saturday and before that they lost the thunder and spurs are actually blown out by both the thunder and the Spurs big time by the Spurs. But prior to that, they'd won five out of six. Yes, they beat the Republicans and the jazz in there, but they also beat Dallas. They split a pair of Dallas and they beat Memphis and they beat Golden State. This, I mean, the Clippers have played well here of late. The wolves have already beaten them twice. And I've said before, I think it's a pretty good matchup for Minnesota, but it obviously becomes less exciting, less tantalizing when there's no, when quite Leonard's back on the floor. The wolves have already won the season series. They only play LA three times this year. They'll be beaten by one back in November at the end of November and then they beat them December 4th. So just over a month ago by 28 and that game was in LA. Yeah. It was in LA. The wolves came in at 10 and 10 and LA was, of course, without Kawhi Leonard in that game and the wolves jumped out, got out to a 33, 14 lead very quickly. And it really wasn't, wasn't a contest at all and they had just beaten them a couple of nights before. This was, so the first game they beat him was November 29th was the day after Thanksgiving. The second game was the following week, two games later from Minnesota. And again, they came in 10 and 10 and it, they jumped out like an anomaly for this season or at least a rarity for the season for the wolves. They jumped out 33, 14 by the end of the first quarter and only had to play 26 minutes. He had 16 points made for threes. Julius Randall also had four threes made and had 20 points in just 26 minutes. It was a big garbage time game from Minnesota. Josh mind up played 21 minutes, Nas played just 21 off the bench to keel played 22 minutes, like nobody played more than 29 for the wolves in this game. I mean, we saw heavy minutes for PJ Dozier and Dacey Nick's. Neither of those guys are in the team anymore. So that was a 28 point win for Minnesota. The week prior, the Friday after Thanksgiving, the wolves stopped a losing streak with that win against the Clippers. In fact, that was the one I referenced toward the beginning of the show. They had a four game losing streak with the Toronto Boston Houston Sacramento losses. Then kicked off a four game winning streak with a skin of their teeth, one point win at home against the Clippers against, and that was NBA cup too, by the way, that was NBA cup play. The wolves are up by six at halftime easily like they should have won and the offense was pretty putrid in this game, but they were able to salvage it at the end and win by a point. James Harden had 20 took him 20 shots to do it though, and he turned it over four times and for the wolves and same deal, 21 points on 21 shots, just not overall, not a good offensive game, 21 turnovers from Minnesota and this one. And thankfully, they shot almost 40% from three and they got enough out of Conley and Ant Conley had 13 points was actually this terrible second leading score in that game to win the game against the Clippers. I don't mind the matchup still. The Kawai thing obviously complicates it. It's a lot more challenging to play when Kawai is on the floor than when he's off. And for, you know, I don't know how mobile he's going to be defensively, but adding the claw out there to a defense to play against the wolves, whose offense has really been struggling. And I mean, the Clippers are, have been a top five defense anyway, like they're a top five defense right now and Kawai Leonard's played in exactly one game so far this season. They're actually, let's see, they're fourth and clean in the glass in overall defensive efficiency. They're first in defensive rebounding on the other side of the floor, a lot like the wolves. The offense has really struggled like their offense is actually worse than Minnesota's on the season and adding quiet and turnovers are an even bigger problem with the Clippers than they are for Minnesota. So again, it's not an awful matchup for the wolves. And I understand, I guess, why they're favored by three points at FanDuel. But given the vibes from Saturday that, that, you know, potentially could carry over from Saturday, coming back to target center for a one game home stand on Monday night, front end of a back to back. They traveled to New Orleans on Tuesday to play the pelicans. And, you know, maybe that they're thinking like, Hey, this is a, we can win in a blowout on Tuesday. Great. Another business at home against the Clippers. And again, I don't actually overall, I like the matchup against the Clippers, even with Kawhi Leonard. I think that Minnesota could force enough turnovers on the defensive end of the floor to give themselves some cheap baskets in transition if they actually push the pace and run the ball, run the ball, like it's a football game, run, run the floor, you know, the Clippers don't play at a very fast pace either. And I think the wolves can take advantage of that and of the turnovers that the Clippers can, you know, can cough up the Clippers that, you know, also defensively, when it comes to what it comes to the Clippers themselves, they're not going to give second chance opportunities. They're also going to force a lot of turnovers. So that's the flip side of it is like, this just could be a an up and down game with two teams that don't normally play fast, but there could be so many turnovers and each team's trying to not go against the other team's set half court defense that you may see a bit of pace pushing, a bit of sloppy play, maybe an uptick in fouls. The wolves have been fouling a little bit more recently. Both teams are kind of middle of the pack in regard to fouls on both ends of the floor. So a pretty interesting matchup, especially with their turn of Kawhi Leonard, and also given that it's the front half of a back to back from Minnesota, they haven't played a back to back in quite some time. In fact, I think the last back to back they had was like before Thanksgiving, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, the last back to back they had was was the Tuesday, Wednesday leading into Thanksgiving and they lost both ends of it, the overtime loss to Houston and then the loss to Sacramento, which I think was an NBA Cup game just the day before Thanksgiving. So yeah, we'll see how the wolves handle the back to back portion of it and also all of the clamoring for lineup changes at the moment. Josh Monnet's questionable as I record this. So hopefully he's able to play Monday night because I think he could make a difference for the wolves. They play the Falcons Tuesday night. So we'll do the post game pod on this show on this feed Tuesday and then I'll just briefly talk pelicans at the end of that one. They've obviously been terrible. They've been, you know, they won the other night, but a very winnable game, a short-handed Orlando team that's still playing great, basically the opposite of a healthy and playing terrible and, you know, playing well below expectations wolves team. They play them on Thursday and then the next game would be Saturday against the Grizzlies. So a couple of tough ones coming up with Orlando, obviously the Clippers and then Memphis and then you get the Pelicans Tuesday and then next Monday it's Washington. So a couple of really easy ones and a couple of really tough ones. I should say should be really easy ones and air quotes, you know, for the wolves, but we'll see how it all turns out. Of course, the live postcast will be at lockdown sports, Minnesota on YouTube tonight, following the game with Jack Borman and Luke Goodman, and then I'll be back on Tuesday with the post game pod. Big thank you for making lockdown wolves your first listen every day. Of course, this shows free to available everywhere that includes YouTube as well as all of your favorite audio platforms. Wherever you like to listen to podcasts, you can find lockdown wolves. You can also watch on the lockdown sports, Minnesota app on both Roku and Amazon fire TV and a reminder to subscribe to the newsletter at locked on daily.com. It'll be in your inbox every day Monday through Friday. All things wolves and some some bigger picture NBA stuff to your inbox Monday through Friday against subscribe at locked on daily dot com. The locked on wolves podcast is part of the locked on podcast network. Remember, the locked on network is your local experts on all the biggest stories. Once again, I'm Ben Beacon. This is the locked on wolves podcast and we'll catch you next time. (upbeat music)
Anthony Edwards scored a career-high 53 points but the Minnesota Timberwolves lacked energy and effort in a stomach-turning loss to the Detroit Pistons. Where do the Wolves go from here?
