OKLAHOMA CITY — With Minnesota’s season coming to a screeching halt just short of its first NBA Finals for the second straight year, Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards made a promise to improve.
“I’m going to work my butt off this summer,” Edwards said after Minnesota’s 124-94 Game 5 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday. “Nobody’s going to work harder than me this summer. I’ll tell you that much.”
The statement came after the Thunder, the league’s No. 1 seed led by MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, made the 23-year-old budding superstar work for everything he got in the Western Conference finals. After he finished the regular season with a 27.6 points average — fourth best in the NBA — he was held below 20 in three of the five games against Oklahoma City.
He had 19 points in the closeout game and went 7-for-18 (1-for-7 from 3) with three turnovers. Minnesota was outscored by 29 points in the 39 minutes Edwards was on the court.
“They were the better team, they came out and beat us, punched us in the face,” Edwards said, “and we lost the game, we lost the series.”
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He was hardly the only culprit in Minnesota’s demise in Game 5. In fact, when the Wolves trailed 26-9 after the first quarter, Edwards had six points while the entire rest of the roster had mustered only three on 1-for-15 shooting.
“We lost our connectivity,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said. “But all credit to the Thunder. They certainly deserved this. They played outstanding. We came up short in a lot of ways.”
Minnesota committed 21 turnovers, leading to 18 points for the Thunder and igniting the crowd that celebrated its team’s first trip to the Finals since 2012. Naz Reid (11 points, 5 rebounds) had five turnovers and Julius Randle (24 points, 5 rebounds) was responsible for four, as the Wolves looked disjointed all night, trailing by as many as 39 points — their largest deficit in any game this season, eclipsing the 36-point lead the New York Knicks built on them in December.
“I feel like we’re a better team than what we showed,” Randle said. “So, a lot of motivation going into the summer, for sure.”
Meanwhile, Wolves role players Nickeil Alexander-Walker (0 points on 0-for-8 shooting), Jaden McDaniels (5 points on 2-for-13 shooting) and Donte DiVincenzo (6 points on 2-for-4 shooting) looked nothing like the trio that combined for 66 points in Game 4, a 128-126 loss at home that proved to be Minnesota’s last gasp.
Not to mention starting center Rudy Gobert (2 points on 1-for-1 shooting) and starting point guard Mike Conley (0 points on 0-for-3) hardly provided anything to keep pace with the Thunder, who had five players in double digits, led by Gilgeous-Alexander (34 points, 8 assists, 7 rebounds).
Wolves rookie Terrence Shannon Jr. scored 35 points over the past three games after barely playing the rest of the postseason up to that point.
“I think we definitely need to lengthen the rotation,” Finch admitted, looking forward. “We got some young guys who are itching to play and I know can help us.”
As disappointing of a result as it was for Edwards, he recognized he’s just starting his journey, having completed his fifth season. The 37-year-old Conley, having finished his 18th, doesn’t have the same amount of sand left in the hourglass.
“I don’t know why people would think it would hurt, it’s exciting for me,” Edwards said. “I’m 23. I get to do it a whole bunch of times. I’m hurt more so for Mike. I came up short for Mike. We tried last year, we couldn’t get it. We tried again this year. We’ll try again next year. But hurt is a terrible word to use. I’m good.”
As lopsided as the conference finals were for the Wolves — they lost the three road games at Paycom Center by a combined 71 points — there was plenty of good that preceded it.
From March through the conference semifinals, the Wolves went 25-6, surprising the No. 3 seeded Los Angeles Lakers as the No. 6 seed in five games in the first round and then beating the Golden State Warriors in five games, too.
It was a strong final chapter, if not a strong final few pages, for a team whose story included a blockbuster trade to acquire Randle and DiVincenzo from the New York Knicks for Karl-Anthony Towns just two days before training camp and a record that hovered around .500 past the All-Star break.
“I remember having a conversation with Anthony, like midseason,” Finch said. “I said, ‘What do you think we think a good season feels like? What do you think that looks like for us right now?’ And he said, ‘Let’s get into the playoffs, win a round and see where we go.’ It was exactly my thought at the time, too.”
Edwards recalled the conversation, and the trying times.
“We thought it was going downhill,” he said. “We thought it was over for us at one point. It was looking real bad for us. … [And] we turned it around.
“We did pretty good this year, man. We just came up short again. Try to do it again next year.”
