Anthony Edwards Says T-Wolves Players Have to 'Mature' After Loss to Blazers

Alika Jenner/ Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards placed the blame on himself and his teammates after the Wolves lost 106-98 to the Portland Trail Blazers.

It was the Wolves' third straight defeat.

"We got the answers. The coaches give us ... the answers," Edwards told reporters in the locker room. "We just not doing it as a team, one through 15. They give us the answers every night. We come in here at 35 [minutes] on the night, and they tell us what we need to do to win the game, and somehow we don't do it every night. We got to get back to it. We got to mature, man."

Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert struck a similar tone with their postgame assessments :

Minnesota shot 39.4 percent from the floor as a team and went 7-of-39 on three-pointers. The Wolves were also out-rebounded 47-41 and allowed 52 points in the paint to a rebuilding Blazers squad. Shaedon Sharpe's 33 points for Portland were a career high.

Twelve games is too early for a team to start panicking, but it's understandable why fans might be concerned with how the Timberwolves are performing.

Minnesota has slipped from first to ninth in defensive rating. The team is 25th in rebounding average despite having Randle and Gobert to anchor the frontcourt. Donte DiVincenzo is shooting just 30.6 percent from deep.

One look at the Western Conference standings points to how tight the playoff race is likely to be. The Dallas Mavericks are in 12th but only 4.5 games back of the first-place Oklahoma City Thunder.

The Timberwolves can't afford to throw away games—let alone two straight—against lesser opponents such as Portland. The comments from Edwards, Randle and Gobert speak to the kind of urgency the players need to display in order to halt their current slide.