OKLAHOMA CITY — Before a Western Conference finals rematch against the Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch was asked about how the offense has evolved since he inserted Donte DiVincenzo in the starting lineup at point guard at the beginning of the season.
His answer explains just how different the team is this season despite so much familiarity on the roster.
“Anthony’s probably more of our point guard than Donte is our point guard,” Finch said, referring to star scorer Anthony Edwards. “He has the ball. He is our lead guard in that regard.”
For much of their time together as coach and prodigy, Finch has been reluctant to build the kind of heliocentric offense with Edwards that is seemingly becoming all the rage across the league. He wanted Edwards to spend his younger days learning the game, unburdened by the responsibility of running the offense along with developing his own game.
Now in year six, and with no other real options for the position, Finch and Edwards are adapting with the rest of the league, which is moving away from the traditional point guard. Chris Paul is retiring at the end of the season. Mike Conley may not be far behind him. In their wake, a new kind of point guard is taking over, one that scores like a 2-guard but has the ball in his hands as much as any of the floor generals about whom your father waxes philosophic.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Oklahoma City, Stephen Curry in Golden State, Luka Dončić with the Los Angeles Lakers, James Harden with the Clippers, Cade Cunningham in Detroit. The list goes on and on, and now includes Edwards.
It is a new role that Edwards is still trying to get comfortable in, like a stiff new pair of shoes that need breaking in. He had 31 points, eight rebounds and a team-leading five assists in a 111-105 loss to the Thunder on Wednesday night, and after the game spoke about how he is still learning to think about the game differently from his new spot.
“I just got to get used to being a point guard, going to get the rock at the end of the game, bringing it up, even though they pressure,” Edwards said.
Much like the previous two games, the Timberwolves were in position to pull off a win on the road against the defending champions only to kick it away in the final two minutes. The game was tied, 101-101, after a 3-pointer from DiVincenzo, and the Wolves had the ball with three minutes to go.
DiVincenzo brought the ball across halfcourt and was waiting for Edwards to get over the stripe. But Edwards was not aggressive in making himself available. Gilgeous-Alexander poked the ball away from DiVincenzo and converted the go-ahead bucket, and the Thunder never looked back.
“Sometimes I’m thinking, let somebody bring it up and then come get it,” Edwards said. “Just to take the pressure off my teammates, I just got to bring the ball up the court and get us into an action.”
The Wolves couldn’t get back into the game because of some familiar bugaboos. Jaden McDaniels made an ill-advised pass for a turnover. Rudy Gobert missed a pair of free throws — the Wolves missed 15 of them — and Julius Randle took a five-second call on an inbounds pass when the Wolves were down five points with 27 seconds to play.
“As I was going through my progressions, they did a good job of covering everything,” Randle said. “I didn’t want to give them a live-ball turnover. Tough one.”
Randle played a very good game on defense, but he was 2 for 13 from the field, 4 for 7 at the free throw line and had three turnovers. Terrence Shannon Jr. had his best game since returning from a foot injury, scoring 18 points on 7-for-7 shooting to give the Wolves some pop off the bench that they have sorely lacked.
Edwards started the game 1 for 5, but scored 14 points in the fourth quarter to rally Minnesota from a 10-point deficit against a team with an average margin of victory of 17 points this season.
HIS 100TH 30-POINT GAME. 🫡 https://t.co/pvNMCQ62Cv pic.twitter.com/v0yQuH1dta
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) November 27, 2025
When Conley first arrived in a trade from Utah three years ago, he was the one who thought the game for the rest of the Wolves, bailing them out of bad spots and helping them avoid trouble when the going got tough. But at 38 years old, he is no longer capable of carrying a load that heavy. He was 1 for 4 on Wednesday night against the young, fast and strong Thunder, and the Wolves were outscored by 17 points in his 12:32 on the court.
Rob Dillingham may have played his best game of what has been a rough second season so far, putting up six points, two assists and no turnovers in 12 minutes. But at 20 years old, he is nowhere near ready yet to fill the point guard role for big minutes on a team pushing for a fifth straight playoff berth.
DiVincenzo is a shooting guard. Breaking a defense down off the dribble, getting into the paint and creating for himself or his teammates is not his strong suit.
That leaves it up to Edwards, one of the best young scorers in the league, to take his role to a higher level. He has not yet shown that he thinks three steps ahead of the defense like Dončić or Harden does, but his vision, passing and understanding of how to attack when the opponent is sending doubles his way have all increased noticeably this season.
The Timberwolves are their most dangerous when the ball is in Edwards’ hands, so that is where it will stay. There will be times when he struggles to get the offense moving, when he over-dribbles in isolation and takes a tough, contested midrange jumper. There will be times he turns it over trying to dribble through traffic, as he did down the stretch against Phoenix last week. But there are also times when he is down right frightening as an offensive engine, hitting step-back 3s from difficult angles, knifing through double teams to get to the rim and drawing three in the paint and kicking out to open shooters.
AE ➡️ JU pic.twitter.com/g5ioP0WGks
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) November 27, 2025
What Edwards needs is reps in high-leverage situations. He has scored 41, 43 and 31 points in the last three games. He went 5-for-10 from deep against the Thunder, and is starting to shift his mentality away from just looking to score every time he touches it to running the show and filling a gaping hole in the Wolves’ roster.
“With no designated point guard, I think I got to be the one to bring the ball up,” Edwards said. “It’s just that simple, so we don’t turn it over, get us into action, get my teammates shots. We’ll be all right.”
He is a veteran in this league now, but still has so much to learn. He has to develop a plan in his head for what he wants to get to in clutch moments, rather than simply reacting to what the defense shows him at the last second. He has to continue to show patience when teams double him as aggressively as they have been, making quick reads to get off the ball and put his team in 4-on-3 advantages.
“He still continues to see two defenders at one of the highest rates in the league,” Finch said. “He’s embraced that a little bit more. At times last year I thought he would fight it. This year he’s finding guys and that is leading to some good offense for his teammates.
“We have to do a better job figuring out how to balance that and free him up so he’s not seeing that look all the time, maybe moving him off the ball a little bit more.”
Edwards, who scored 31 points to go with eight rebounds and five assists vs. the Thunder, is growing more accustomed to his new role. (Alonzo Adams / Imagn Images)
No one was willing to take a moral victory for taking an 18-1 team down the wire. But not all losses are created equal. The Kings and Suns losses were so embarrassing that Conley scheduled a team dinner to try to reset things.
The group gathered on Tuesday night at Mahogany Prime Steakhouse, a famous setting for team functions in Oklahoma City. It was less an urgent, come-to-Jesus meeting than a chance to reconnect. The connotations that normally come with the dreaded “players-only meeting” did not ripple through the room. Yes, those two losses should not have happened. But they also were not reason to panic.
“It’s the perfect time to bring it all back together, perspective, who we want to be, what we want to accomplish on the court, how we can be better as a team, as players,” Conley said. “But also, it’s OK to eat, enjoy each other and watch other basketball games and talk basketball and not be all about business all the time. Sometimes you need that.”
They didn’t need to clear the air. They needed some fellowship. Finch told the team after the Sacramento loss that they were “lifeless” and Randle said he could feel that they were not on the same page.
“Just get that connectivity back,” he said. “I think we’ve been missing that on this trip. It’s not like us.”
The Wolves followed that up by slugging it out with the mighty Thunder, playing a hard-nosed brand of defense and refusing to give in even as the shots were not falling and OKC built a double-digit lead in the second half. The fact that they weren’t satisfied could indicate they are closer to getting things going than it may seem.
“I’m not a moral victory type of guy. Nah,” Edwards said. “We lost. Got our ass kicked, again, by them. I hate it. I’m just ready to play them again.”
