The Timberwolves have spent the first week of the season looking like a different team, and for the most part, that’s been a welcome change.
Three straight blowout wins to open the year showed a group playing with more poise and more swagger than last season’s version. LaMelo Ball, acquired by Minnesota in June, has helped supply that edge, and the overall vibe around the roster has clearly shifted. With a younger core carrying more of the load, the Wolves have still looked composed.
Then came Monday night in Cleveland, where Minnesota absorbed its first loss of the season, 127-125 in overtime to the Cavaliers.
The defeat exposed the one problem that has followed this team into the new year, and it may be even more important now. Anthony Edwards poured in 47 points, but the Wolves still came up short. And with Edwards now expected to miss about two months after undergoing a procedure on his right knee, the margin for error just got a lot thinner.
The free-throw line has been that margin - and right now, it’s a mess.
Through four games, Minnesota is shooting 60.7% on free throws, the worst mark in the NBA by a wide gap. The next-worst team, Indiana, is at 70.1%.
That’s not just a dip. That’s a crater.
Against Cleveland, the Wolves were 14 of 23 at the stripe. In clutch time, they went 2 of 6. One of those misses was by design: Ball missed the first of two late in overtime, then intentionally missed the second in hopes of giving Minnesota a shot at an offensive rebound and a tying three.
Instead, Edwards came up short on a wide-open three that would have forced double overtime. He could only grin afterward, knowing it was a makeable look for him.
Edwards still put up a huge scoring night, finishing 19 of 33 from the field and 5 of 15 from deep. But his shot from long range never really found its rhythm, and it wasn’t just him.
Minnesota shot 32% from beyond the arc, turned it over 17 times, and watched Cleveland score 63 points in the second half while hitting 47% of its shots. A back-to-back clearly caught up with the Wolves, but they still hung around long enough to make the loss sting.
That’s the part that matters. There usually aren’t moral victories in the NBA, and this one feels like a game Minnesota should have taken if it had simply been average at the line.
There was also the late-regulation moment that will linger for plenty of fans: James Harden fouled Edwards on a layup attempt with the score tied, but the officials didn’t call it. That’s the kind of missed whistle people will talk about. Still, it’s hard to get too worked up over officiating when the Wolves went to the line 22 times and left nine points sitting there.
This problem didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Last season, Minnesota ranked 29th in free-throw percentage at 75.2% while taking the seventh-most attempts in the league. Being bad at the stripe doesn’t automatically doom a team - the Clippers and Hornets both finished near the top of the league in percentage last season and missed the playoffs - but it becomes a glaring issue when a team is tired, out of rhythm, and needing easy points in a tight game.
The personnel numbers suggest Minnesota should do better than this over time. Rudy Gobert, who has a career free-throw percentage of 63.3%, leads the team with 24 attempts through four games and is shooting 50% so far.
He went 5 of 8 against Cleveland. Jonathan Kuminga is a career 69.9% shooter, Trey Lyles sits at 74.1%, and Joan Beringer is at 70.3% in a small sample.
Outside of that group, most of the rotation has been reasonable at the line over the course of their careers. That’s why the Wolves should improve as the season goes on. The law of averages usually takes care of that.
But the bigger issue is what happens without Edwards. He’s shooting 15 of 20 from the stripe this season, which is below his career mark but still far better than the team’s current rate. He doesn’t live at the line the way some stars do, but his downhill aggression consistently gets him there.
Without him, Minnesota loses both a scorer and one of its most reliable sources of free throws. That makes the Wolves’ own foul-line issues even harder to ignore.
They’ve looked more mature. They’ve looked more together. But the same old weakness is still hanging around, and now the team’s best answer at the stripe is out of the lineup for a while.
In Other News...
Anthony Edwards Child Support Fight Just Took A More Serious Turn
Anthony Edwards off-court legal situation has been simmering for months, and the latest court action has only sharpened the stakes. The Timberwolves star remains in an ongoing child support dispute with Alexandria Desroches over their son, with the case now carrying the kind of financial and legal obligations that can ripple well beyond the courtroom.
Desroches has denied Edwards claim that support payments might be misused for gambling, even as she has acknowledged limited gambling activity of her own. Edwards, for his part, has raised concerns about how the money could be handled and sought a more controlled arrangement, keeping the matter unresolved while the legal process continues to unfold. [Read more 🡒]
Tim Connelly Just Changed The Anthony Edwards Surgery Debate
Tim Connellys explanation offered a little more clarity around Anthony Edwards knee situation, and it also reshaped the timeline. The Timberwolves president of basketball operations said the arthroscopic procedure could not have happened during the offseason because recent imaging revealed changes that made surgery necessary. In other words, this was not a case of the organization sitting on a decision for months. It became apparent only after Edwards felt discomfort following a game against the Cavaliers.
The details matter because Edwards is dealing with his right knee, the one that had inflammation during the previous regular season, not the left knee that was injured in the playoffs. For a team that leans so heavily on Edwards, any update involving a knee procedure naturally draws attention, especially when it comes with a medical explanation that points to something evolving rather than routine maintenance. Connellys comments did not remove the concern, but they did make clear why the surgery happened when it did. [Read more 🡒]
LaMelo Ball Now Faces The Pressure Minnesota Can't Escape
Anthony Edwards knee injury leaves Minnesota without the engine that usually drives its offense, and the timing makes the adjustment even more delicate. With Edwards sidelined, LaMelo Ball is expected to shoulder the primary scoring and playmaking burden, a role that asks him to do more than simply create highlights or wait for the game to come to him.
Ball has long had the offensive talent to tilt a defense, but Minnesota now needs him to turn that talent into nightly structure. The question is whether he can settle into being the first option with enough force and consistency, or whether the Timberwolves will spend the next stretch asking him to carry a load he has not fully taken on yet. [Read more 🡒]