Andrew Wiggins Drops 23 as T-Wolves Crush Carmelo Anthony, Trail Blazers

Fresh off a thrilling victory in Toronto on Tuesday, the Portland Trail Blazers' rocky season continued with a 116-102 loss to a Minnesota Timberwolves squad missing its star player in Karl-Anthony Towns on Thursday night at Target Center.

The victory gives the Timberwolves four wins in the last six games, and the two losses came on the road by a combined nine points to the Milwaukee Bucks and Memphis Grizzlies.

Portland and Minnesota have seen their seasons go off the rails early this year—both entered the night 10-plus games back of the Denver Nuggets for the Northwest Division lead—and if they don't start making up ground quickly, the prospect of tearing things down and starting over will only get more realistic.

The rumor mill has already begun to pick up for Towns, but no deal is imminent, per KSTP's Darren Wolfson. Towns has now missed the last 12 games with a left knee sprain but is expected back soon.

Notable Performers:

• Andrew Wiggins, SF, Timberwolves: 23 points, 8 assists, 3 rebounds
• Gorgui Dieng, C, Timberwolves: 12 points, 10 rebounds
• Damian Lillard, G, Trail Blazers: 20 points, 8 assists, 4 rebounds
• Hassan Whiteside, C, Trail Blazers: 15 points, 14 rebounds, 2 blocks

No KAT, No Problem

No one will suggest the Timberwolves are a better team without Towns on the floor, but their recent run will have plenty of NBA analysts wondering if they are using him as best they can. 

Over the last 12 games without Towns in the lineup, the Timberwolves have posted the best defensive rating in the league (101.4) while ranking third in steals (9.4) and fourth in blocks per game (6.8). Granted, they're just 5-7 over that stretch, but it's encouraging to see head coach Ryan Saunders find a way to get his team to mesh without his franchise player available. 

That's meant continually pushing buttons on the bench to get the most out of Noah Vonleh (eight points, six rebounds) and Gorgui Dieng, who has seen his minutes more than double with Towns injured. After averaging 4.4 points and 4.0 rebounds in 12.4 minutes per game to start the year, he's taken quite the leap to average 13.3 points and 9.3 rebounds in just under 28 minutes per game over his last 12 contests. 

Towns makes the Timberwolves better, no question about it. Soon Saunders will have the good fortune to figure out how to reincorporate his two-time All-Star into the lineup for the rest of the season.

Getting that to translate into wins will be the hard part. 

Portland's Perilous Playoff Position 

The Trail Blazers and Timberwolves are both just 1.5 games back of the San Antonio Spurs for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. After Thursday's game, it hardly feels like they belong in the same class.

A 10-day, five-game road trip, mostly against sub-.500 teams, did nothing to help what's essentially become a lost season for Damian Lillard and Co., and it's unclear if they have the tools to correct course. With Jusuf Nurkic, Rodney Hood, Zach Collins and Skal Labissiere all injured, there's hardly any room for error.

Yet Portland keeps dropping winnable games. 

Aside from Thursday's result, the Blazers have recently lost to the New York Knicks, Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans—three of the worst teams in the league at the moment. In a vacuum, those games would already be tough to digest. Now, consider that winning any two of them would have Portland in a playoff spot.

The Carmelo Anthony experiment has been fun, but he's shooting a middling 43.1 percent from the floor while averaging 16.1 points per game—the second-worst mark of his career. He's also Portland's third-leading scorer. 

Right now, the Blazers don't seem to have enough help for Lillard to keep things consistently on track, and they're running out of time to prove otherwise.

What's Next

Things won't get any easier for the Blazers with the first-place Bucks visiting Portland on Saturday. Their next chance to nab a win will come right after that with a home game against the Charlotte Hornets before a two-game road trip to Texas pits them against the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks. 

The Timberwolves won't be getting a break in the next few days, either.

Minnesota will fly down to Houston to see the Rockets on Saturday before hurrying back home to host the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday. That leads into a home-and-home series with the Indiana Pacers. If a turnaround is possible for the Timberwolves, these next few games will give them a chance to prove so.