The Timberwolves lost to the Lakers 123-111 on Friday night. That was bad enough for the Wolves given the impact it had on the Western Conference standings, in which the Wolves fell a game behind the Lakers in playoff positioning.
What was most upsetting for Minnesota was how it lost. A team that had appeared to turn a corner in recent weeks, a team that was playing smart basketball on both ends of the floor, looked as discombobulated and mistake-prone as it has all season.
After the Wolves were ahead 13 in the third quarter, they lost all sense of themselves as a team and looked more like the younger group they were last season than the mature team they seemed to become recently.