“I think we just gotta put ’em behind us. We can’t dwell on ’em.” Anthony Edwards was the voice of optimism after his team’s bad run. After a three-game win streak, the Minnesota Timberwolves suffered a 1-point margin loss against the Miami Heat. While the same could have been forgotten easily, it didn’t help that the franchise next lost to the Portland Trail Blazers, the same team that ended dead last on the Western Conference points table last season, by 122-108. Amid all this, the young player is willing to take responsibility, but not at the expense of his coach.

In the aftermath of the recent Timberwolves-Trail Blazers game, Anthony Edwards engaged in a Q&A session. During the same, he stated that he and his teammates do not find any lack of effort coming from their side. Only a lack of, as Edwards said, “processing in our minds.” The lead scorer believed that fatigue affected decision-making, causing the Timberwolves squad to do things they wouldn’t necessarily do on the defensive end.

Edwards revealed this wasn’t necessarily the coach’s fault since “We got the answers. The coach give us the fu***ng answers. We’re just not doing it as a team. 1 through 15, they give us the answers every fu***ng night. Every night, we come in here at 1 o’clock, and they tell us what we need to do to win a game. Somehow, we don’t do it every night. So, we gotta get back up there.”

Anthony Edwards may mean well as he looks to defend Chris Finch and the other coaching staff during the Timberwolves’ losing streak. However, the player himself indicated that there might have been an alleged lapse from the instructing side, too. During the same Q&A session, someone handed the 23-year-old a chart. After observing it for a few seconds, he asked, “How do I look at their pain points?” If there was one word to describe Edwards at that moment, it was ‘Puzzled.’

The first Timberwolves-Trail Blazers matchup had seen Anthony Edwards and co-record a season-high  23 turnovers. The situation was a bit better during the most recent game. However, there were lapses there, too, since the franchise accumulated 14 turnovers, with 7 of them made in the 2 quarter. Tensions had started to come up right from when the Portland Trail Blazers had a 13-2 start to the game. Anthony Edwards shoved Banton during a jump ball, and Banton shoved back, but both players received technical foul calls. The lead scorer attempted to stay ahead by making 24 points in 40 minutes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.

Currently, under a 6-6 win record, it is hard to believe that this is the same franchise that made it to the Conference Finals last season. Amidst all the changes that took place in the offseason, the most prominent being Karl-Anthony Towns’ trade to the Knicks, the franchise may simply be facing difficulty in finding his footing. Even the person who Anthony Edwards was defending seems to believe so.

Prior to Anthony Edwards’ Remarks, Chris Finch admitted to lapse: “I didn’t get it right”

After a three-win streak, losing a game by a 1-point margin, and that too at home, cannot be easy. The Miami Heat’s win was credited in part to a new strategy that head coach Erik Spoelstra seemed to have devised. According to reports, the Heat coach’s sideline out-of-bounds play helped get easy layups for Nikola Jovic. Meanwhile, Chris Finch’s decision to replace Nickeil Alexander-Walk for Mike Conley, as his team led by 90-87 with 2:34 minutes on the clock, became noticeable. Ultimately, any lapses cost the team, but Chris Finch was there to take responsibility.

“I didn’t get it right,” said the Timberwolves head coach. “Tonight, coming down the stretch, I didn’t get it right. I told you guys that we wouldn’t always get it right. But yeah, if I had to go back and do it over, I’d certainly do it differently.”,  he continued, acknowledging the part where he may have gone wrong.

With their recent loss, the Minnesota Timberwolves have fallen to the 11th seed on the points chart. The rest of the rival teams are moving on. While the majority of the regular season remains, Anthony Edwards and co. cannot afford more losing streaks if they look to reach the playoffs once again this season.