SAN FRANCISCO — A large portion of Wednesday night resembled a circle of basketball hell for the Timberwolves.
The player who will haunt the franchise in perpetuity for passing on him in the draft, Stephen Curry, helped turn the Chase Center into a playground for his team to try out all kinds of dunks and alley oops.
The former team cornerstone, Andrew Wiggins, who was often criticized for lacking fire, came out with it as he looked like the player the franchise badly wanted to see during his tumultuous tenure.
To top it off, this current iteration of the Wolves fell apart in the second quarter and couldn't come all the way back in a sixth straight loss, this time 123-110 to Golden State.
The only Wolves player who met the moment when the game mattered was Anthony Edwards, as he scored 48 on 16-of-27 shooting, attacking the rim early and often.
"I'm not mad at tonight," Edwards said. "Forget the points, just how we was down 20, the way that we fought as a team, overall, I loved that. That gave me energy to keep going. I was tired, man. I was exhausted."
Last season Edwards marveled at the way Curry played, at how much energy he expended on the floor. The Wolves needed all Edwards could give in the 41 minutes he played.
"It was absolutely perfect," Finch said of Edwards' night.
If only any other part of the night was that way.
The Wolves just didn't give him much help. Karl-Anthony Towns struggled all night — Finch attributed a portion of this to the officials — as he had 17 points on 6-of-19 shooting.
"It's just one of them days," Towns said. "Didn't shoot well. I'm not going to get fined up here, but the stat sheet speaks for itself."
Towns didn't shoot any free throws.
D'Angelo Russell had one burst of threes in the third quarter and finished with 18 points but struggled in the first half. Meanwhile, Wiggins tortured them in the beginning and then at the end with a season-high 35 points. Curry added 25.
Wiggins, who has had a tendency of playing his best basketball against a handful of teams like Cleveland, Oklahoma City and Toronto, put the Wolves on that list in ink.
"He always does that," Towns said. "Any team — Cavaliers traded him, Wolves traded him — you expect him to come out and play well."
Added Finch: "This is the second time I've been with the team playing the Warriors. Both times he's had big nights. Obviously he has a personal vendetta."
BOXSCORE: Golden State 123, Wolves 110
Wiggins hit his first 10 shots and then sealed the night with a three and a putback dunk. He insisted this was only a game. He didn't play like it.
"Not a revenge game," Wiggins said. "A well-played basketball game against a former team. That is all that was."
Careless turnovers and lackadaisical transition defense from the Wolves turned a chunk of the second quarter into a layup and dunk line for the Warriors.
Wiggins got in on the act, sending one home on Towns in a signal this was not one of those nights in which Wiggins looked uninterested. That dunk pushed Golden State's lead to 20, 62-42. The Wolves cut it to four in the third but lacked the execution and the rebounding (Golden State had 20 offensive rebounds) to keep building on their run, as brilliant as Edwards was.
Last week Edwards said it can be tiring to constantly attack the rim, especially if he wasn't seeing results. His teammates' resolve kept him going, and he he sounded like he wanted to take back some of the previous comments.
"What I said last week, I sounded like a loser," Edwards said. "When you determined, I mean, you just got to keep going. Tonight I just kept going. I'm going to make you make a call. Whether you make it or not, I'll live with me missing at the rim and you not making a call."
But it was Wiggins who got to perform the encore. He put the finishing touches on his night with a three-pointer in front of Towns to make it a 116-103 lead with 2:22 left and erase thoughts of a Wolves comeback. Then he added a large exclamation point as he soared for putback dunk and exited to a large ovation with less than a minute left.
Try as Edwards might, he couldn't help the Wolves escape their past.
