PORTLAND, ORE. — There is usually a delicate dance an NBA coach and players walk when they want to criticize officials after a game like the Timberwolves' 124-118 loss to Portland.
They know the league will fine them for talking bad about officials, so there are indirect ways they try to let you know they were displeased. Most of the time, it's an exercise in being passive aggressive.
On Saturday night, Wolves coach Chris Finch didn't try to hide that he thought officiating played a significant role in his team's loss.
The Wolves lost a game they could have won after Damian Lillard scored 36 points. Fifteen of those points came at the free-throw line. Lillard hit every free-throw attempt he had.
"I thought a lot of them, we were sliding our feet, we were there," Finch said. "They're initiating the contact on the drive. I thought for a lot of them, we were good. I thought we were driving too. I thought there was equal amounts of contact on our drives going the other direction too."
Then he added: "But, yeah, 15 free throws by Lillard. It's pretty impressive for a guard."
For those that think a balanced number of free throws and fouls called equals a fairly officiated game, the Wolves took 24 free throws to Portland's 28. The Blazers committed 24 fouls; the Wolves committed 21.
"Our guys were in good position, playing good defense," forward Kyle Anderson said. "We're not even going to get into that. It's tough. Playing good defense and then he's going to the line. He's too good for that."
Fouls weren't the only story for the Wolves, however. After building a 10-point lead behind a sizzling third from Anthony Edwards, who had 13 of his 26 points in that quarter, the Wolves squandered all of it by the start of the fourth thanks to a bunch of empty possessions that included three turnovers in the final minutes.
They trailed 94-92 to begin the fourth, there were more turnovers and misses, and the Wolves trailed by nine before they regrouped and got as close as two behind a strong offensive effort from Rudy Gobert (24 points, nine rebounds) in the fourth.
"I'm just trying to be aggressive," Gobert said. "I think my teammates, we're starting to get to know each other a little better. There's some trust that has been coming along."
The Wolves only had 13 turnovers overall. Unfortunately for them five came in that stretch between the time they were up 10 and then fell behind by nine. But they trailed just 115-113 with under three minutes to play.
After allowing 17 second-chance points in the first half, the Wolves had given up only two up until that point in the second half. But after forcing a miss from Anfernee Simons (31 points), the Wolves couldn't corral the rebound.
Simons rebounded his own miss, kicked it out to Jerami Grant, who swung the ball to Lillard. He canned a 31-footer for a five-point Portland lead. The Wolves never threatened again.
"We weren't very physical," Finch said of the rebounding. "We didn't put our body on enough people. They hold Rudy, they tie him up, they get into his body. We've got to go and get into their bodies and we've got to swarm."
Ultimately, there was a lot of blame to go around. The Wolves lost their composure for key stretches where they held it in Friday's win over Utah. Edwards went scoreless in the fourth while D'Angelo Russell shot well most of the night (25 points on 9-for-15) but couldn't recapture his fourth-quarter heroics from the past two games to bail out his team.
Even Finch might have wanted to take a timeout back that he called with 3 minutes, 23 seconds remaining when the Wolves seemed like they had a chance to score in transition.
"I had a timeout to use, and we might have had a clear advantage," Finch said. "Maybe I shouldn't have called it. But I wanted to make sure we could rest for the last three minutes."
That's because Finch went heavy on the minutes for the starters on the second night of a back to back. Edwards played 40:10, Anderson 39:29, Russell 39:10.
Finch also lamented the bench didn't give the Wolves much outside of Naz Reid (15 points). In related news, point guard Jordan McLaughlin missed the game after reaggravating his left calf injury that caused him to miss five games recently. Perhaps that led to some of the bench's offensive issues, especially late in the third and early fourth when the Wolves lost control.
"It's always like those little four or five minute spells where we'll have like three or four turnovers," Anderson said. "We have to eliminate that."
They face Portland again Monday and can show if they learned from those mistakes.
