Search for Answers Leaves Timberwolves Howling

MINNEAPOLIS —  Of course, no one ever told the Timberwolves this was going to be easy, or fun, or possible.

If the NBA playoffs’ lone home underdogs had a chance, it lay in playing their best game Sunday and hoping they didn’t get the Lakers’ best back.

Imagine how much trouble the locals were in when it turned out to be the other way around.

“I’d like to say I have a lot of answers,” said Coach Flip Saunders, after the Lakers finished pounding his Timberwolves, 117-98, “but I probably don’t at this point.”

If they had had more notice the Lakers were going to finish No. 5, they could have tried to drop out of fourth place. But it’s too late for that now.

Reinforcements also are out of the question. The Timberwolves will just have to try playing better, and hoping, or making, the Lakers play worse.

Saunders was hoping to see some other incarnation of the Lakers on Sunday, like the one that messed around all this season. Or the one that supposedly hit its famous switch last spring but actually started the playoffs with two uninspired efforts against the Trail Blazers, then lost one of the first two to the Spurs and two of the first three to the Kings.

However, the Lakers often play with more purpose on the road, where they were 15-2 in the ’01 and ’02 postseasons, where they perceive opponents as actual threats.

Or maybe they’re just in a better place than they were last spring. Whatever the case, the Lakers controlled Sunday’s opening tip, and everything thereafter.

Shaquille O’Neal blocked two of the Timberwolves’ first six shots and Kobe Bryant scored 12 points with five assists and Derek Fisher and Rick Fox dropped in five three-point baskets and the Lakers held the Timberwolves to only two baskets within 10 feet of the basket, all in the first quarter.

Thus it was no surprise the Lakers were up 18 points in the first quarter or, if you have seen him before, even that Bryant had 28 by halftime.

The surprise was that the Timberwolves not only didn’t flee, they managed to turn it back into a game -- if briefly -- in the second half. The Timberwolves have huge hearts, although in the predicament they find themselves at the moment, they’d be in better shape if they had a huge center too.

“We don’t think of it as a switch,” Bryant said later. “It’s a sense of urgency because the moment of truth is here. There’s an immediate threat, an immediate danger, because they can knock us out of our title run.

“So that’s something we have to deal with and deal with right now.”

On the bright side, at least the Timberwolves know they got the Lakers’ full attention.

As coaches do, Saunders spent the days before Sunday’s game working for any edge he could find, as when he said the Lakers had more pressure on them.

“A lot of people talk about the pressure we have,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of pressure too. You can’t tell me that as the defending champion, that you want to be in a situation knowing you’ve got to go somewhere and win three series, really four series, all on the road. I mean, if they do that, they’ll go down as maybe one of the greatest champions.”

Not that anyone was buying, even here. Instead, the townspeople ran around yelling the sky was falling, those that even noticed there was a series. The opener failed to sell out by more than 1,900 seats.

Lamented Mychal Thompson, the former Laker, who now does color commentary for the Timberwolves, before the game:

“Whenever I tell anyone the Wolves have a chance, hilarious laughter ensues. I could go to Vegas with that line.”

Down as many as 20 points in the first half, the Timberwolves tried to make a game of it, closing to within 80-76 with some inspired defense that will have to become standard if they’re going to slow down this express train.

“I told our guys, initially, to start the game, we didn’t have the aggressiveness to play anyone in a playoff series but especially someone with the weapons the Lakers have,” Saunders said.

Or as a subdued Kevin Garnett put it: “I actually thought we were going to be a lot more geeked up, so to speak.”

Under normal circumstances, with their town without pity already scheduling them for a seventh consecutive first-round exit, perhaps by the weekend, you might wonder how the Timberwolves would find it within themselves to come back, but that’s what they do, following the lead of the arch-tenacious Garnett.

Look for more aggression Tuesday night when the Lakers may not shoot 55% again.

Of course, it still may not be enough. By supper time Sunday, not even Mychal Thompson was telling people the Timberwolves have a chance.