Anthony Edwards was out. Rudy Gobert was out. Donte DiVincenzo was out. The top of Minnesota's roster was gutted heading into Saturday night, on top of five games in seven days and a back-to-back the day after beating the Clippers at home. A team in that shape staying within range of a Victor Wembanyama team that came in red hot was a credible effort.
Credible effort and good defense aren't the same thing, and Minnesota's defense broke down in a way three missing names can't fully explain. Wembanyama finished with 43 points on 34 shots, the most he's ever taken in a game. The Spurs' MVP favorite had to hunt down nearly three dozen shots to beat a short-handed opponent. That took real work. A healthy Spurs team getting that kind of volume from its best player against a full-strength Wolves team would be a real scare. Getting it against a team missing its top three names is a result, nothing more.
So pump the brakes on calling the Spurs overrated frauds, and on calling this some cosmic injustice. Both takes ask more of one game than it can support. San Antonio's riding a four-game winning streak, and came into the season as a title favorite with Wembanyama the runaway MVP pick in the preseason GM survey. They stumbled out of the gate and clawed back to form. That's a real team finding itself after a slow start. At the same time, needing a career high in shots from a seven-footer to beat a team playing three men short doesn't look like a juggernaut steamrolling the league.
Rating
RatingLaMelo Ball cost Minnesota this game. He picked up his fourth foul with 7:40 left in the first half and sat for a long stretch, then fouled out with 3:43 remaining after picking up his fifth during a 13-4 Spurs run that opened the second half. Ayo Dosunmu led the Wolves with 27 points and nine rebounds and kept this competitive mostly by himself down the stretch, but he can't do that and guard Wembanyama without his best perimeter playmaker on the floor too. Blaming the referees for Ball's foul trouble is a cop-out that lets the real reason this got away from Minnesota off the hook.
The injuries are real, the schedule grind is real, and anyone calling this a disgraceful loss hasn't looked at who was in uniform. Anyone using those same injuries to wave away a defense that let one guy shoot 34 times and still get whatever he wanted is doing exactly what they're accusing the other side of: making excuses. This was a respectable loss. It still exposed a defense with real problems that Anthony Edwards' return alone won't fix, and LaMelo Ball made sure Minnesota never had a real chance to finish the job.
