DAYS AFTER THE Minnesota Timberwolves made a core-altering blockbuster trade, Anthony Edwards sensed that his new co-star was concerned about stepping on toes.
It was just a training camp scrimmage, but Julius Randle looked more like a hesitant rookie than a veteran with a decade of experience and a few All-Star appearances on his résumé.
There were instantly questions about fit when the Timberwolves, coming off a Western Conference finals appearance, replaced sweet-shooting 7-foot franchise cornerstone Karl-Anthony Towns in the starting lineup with a ball-dominant power forward. Edwards attempted to ease any pressure Randle felt as he adjusted to his new team, along with guard Donte DiVincenzo and the Detroit Pistons' protected first-round pick in the deal that sent Towns to the New York Knicks.
"Make us fit around you," Edwards told Randle during the scrimmage, encouraging his new teammate to play with the same level of aggressiveness he displayed while averaging 23.0 points per game during his five-year Knicks tenure. "Don't try to fit around us."
It was a pleasant thought, but the process hasn't been nearly so simple. For the second time in three seasons, the Timberwolves have struggled to form chemistry on the fly in the wake of a major trade.
"It's an adjustment, but we want to be winning games while we're figuring it out," Randle told ESPN. "We show phases of being able to do that."
Meanwhile, Towns has made a smooth adjustment in New York. He's in the midst of a career year, averaging an efficient 25.4 points and 13.9 rebounds for the 27-15 Knicks as Randle and the Timberwolves make their annual visit to Randle's old home of Madison Square Garden on Friday night. Towns, however, is questionable against his former team after suffering a bone chip and sprain in his thumb in last Monday's game.
After the 2022 offseason acquisition of Rudy Gobert, it took a full season for Minnesota to figure out the center, a dominant defensive anchor whose offensive limitations create spacing challenges.
It hasn't been any easier for the 21-19 Timberwolves to incorporate Randle, in particular, during what has been a frustrating first half of the season.
"No doubt about it, it's been definitely a work in progress," Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. "Having a chemistry with Rudy is one piece all to itself. How do we [handle] that spacing when neither of 'em have the ball, spacing when one of 'em has the ball? Now we're trying to put them in actions together a little bit more. So that's kind of going to take some time.
"We've seen that with KAT in our first year and also in [Randle] establishing a chemistry with Ant as well and how to get those guys to use each other to their best benefit. And it's not been seamless, to be honest with you. And sometimes when the three of 'em are on the floor, it's been really clunky.
"But we feel like we're getting somewhere finally."
But there have been plenty of potholes on the road.
WITH FIVE MINUTES remaining in a tied November game, Randle dribbled the ball above the arc while sizing up Toronto Raptors center Jakob Poeltl, planning to attack a perceived mismatch. But Gobert had intentions to take advantage of his mismatch, fighting for a deep seal on 6-8 forward Scottie Barnes, pinning the smaller defender on his back under the basket and raising his right hand up high to demand the ball.
Randle tilted his head to the left in an attempt to subtly send a message for Gobert to get out of the paint. Gobert didn't budge, locking eyes with Randle, who took a couple more dribbles before using his right hand to wave off the big man.
Gobert begrudgingly accepted that Randle wouldn't be passing him the ball. He slumped his shoulders and shook his head as he slowly shuffled out of the lane. Too slowly.
As Randle began to penetrate, the whistle blew. Gobert got called for a three-second violation.
Randle and Gobert avoided eye contact as they walked to the other end of the floor. With palms raised, Edwards confronted the big man, upset that Gobert's silent protest caused a turnover on a critical possession.
Gobert then committed an obvious foul by hip-checking Barnes away from the ball, giving the Raptors two free throws and the lead for good.
It was an extraordinarily public and costly display of painfully awkward chemistry.
"No matter the reason, my reaction was not the reaction of a leader, so I apologized for that," Gobert told ESPN later. "You lose one of your top players and you bring some other very good players and things don't happen overnight. It comes with putting the work in every day and the belief in one another and the belief in who we are.
"All these things, that's called chemistry, and a lot of it you only figure it out while you're going through some mistakes."
During all these mistakes, could the fallout have forced lines of communication to finally open?
"Nah, we just move past it," Randle told ESPN. "Things happen as a team, as teammates. You talk about it, you address it and we just move past it."
Minnesota didn't move past it with much immediate grace. The loss to the Raptors started a four-game skid that culminated with the Timberwolves blowing a double-digit lead in the final seven minutes of a 115-104 home loss to the Sacramento Kings.
"Whatcha wanna know?" Edwards asked the scrum of reporters hovering around his Target Center locker on that Nov. 27 night. "Why we trash?"
After seven losses in a nine-game span, Edwards made it abundantly clear that the good vibes were long gone from last season's 56-win campaign and conference finals run, labeling the Timberwolves as "front-runners" who were "growing away from each other."
Edwards insisted the issues weren't caused solely by adding two core players, Randle and DiVincenzo, just before training camp opened. According to the face of the franchise, the accountability for the problems reached all corners of the locker room.
"Sometimes it's tough because like looking at everybody, and everybody got a different agenda," Edwards told reporters. "It's like, what the f--- am I supposed to say? I'm trying to get better in that aspect to figure out what the hell to say to get everybody on the same agenda because everybody right now is on different agendas.
It wasn't necessarily surprising that the Timberwolves sputtered offensively after trading their second-leading scorer late in the offseason. After all, Minnesota was mediocre on that end last season with Towns in the mix, finishing 17th in offensive efficiency, same as this season.
But the defensive slippage is what really bothered Edwards, which he attributed to a lack of communication and often ignoring the game plan. The Timberwolves defense was the foundation for their success last season, and this season Minnesota had been merely average on that end.
"We thought defense was our identity, and it's not looking like that," Edwards said that night, when the Timberwolves fell to 8-10. "Our identity right now, me and Mike [Conley] was talking about it, I think is we soft as hell as a team, internally.
"Not to the other team, but like internally we soft, like we can't talk to each other. Just a bunch of little kids, just like we playing with a bunch of little kids. Like everybody, like the whole team, we just can't talk to each other and we gotta figure it out, man, because we can't go down this road."
Edwards didn't express anything in the interview that the Timberwolves hadn't discussed behind closed doors.
"We've talked about this many times, but let's put words into actions," Gobert said. "Everything that he was saying was right. We knew that we were a defensive team, but we weren't having that approach consistently, especially at the start of games. So it was great to hear him say that. "
Minnesota responded by winning six of the next seven games. The Timberwolves held their opponents under triple digits in each of those victories, proving that last season's defensive blueprint still worked.
If only Minnesota could sustain it. The Timberwolves' three-week run was embarrassingly interrupted when the Knicks cruised to a 133-107 win during Towns' 32-point, 20-rebound return to Minnesota on Dec. 15, the start of a three-game losing streak.
"Sometimes we let our offense dictate our defense and we just can't do that." Edwards said later. "We are a defensive team."
"One thing we really realized is that when we move the ball and when we play within our flow, whether we make shots or not, we're more connected," Gobert said. "Then it really impacts our defense."
BALL MOVEMENT, or lack thereof, has been a frequent topic during Timberwolves film sessions.
The ball "sticking too much" was the primary concern entering the season considering the preference of both Edwards and Randle to pound the dribble while searching for opportunities to attack.
"That's something that we've definitely struggled with," said Finch, who has staggered Edwards and Randle in his substitution patterns more often recently in an effort to alleviate the problem. "That's been one of the challenges for sure. Even though they're very different players, they have very similar rhythms to their game. But they do have the ability to go somewhere with the ball and draw a crowd, and they just got to make the right play at the end of that."
The offense becoming too stagnant has been especially problematic for the Timberwolves late in close games. They're within the bottom five in the league in scoring in clutch situations, averaging 100.0 points per 100 possessions when the score is within five points in the final five minutes.
It's a strategic issue that also has psychological ramifications.
"I tell 'em all the time, you miss a wide-open guy and you take 20 dribbles in a possession, it can affect that person on the next possession," said Mike Conley, the 37-year-old point guard who has struggled this season, averaging career lows of 7.7 points per game on 35.2% shooting.
"That's the thing for us; it's more about the on-time plays as opposed to them actually making the pass. A lot of times, they'll make the pass and sometimes it might be a beat late or a couple seconds late because we kind of exhausted our dribble too much."
Finch has dedicated countless hours over the past four years teaching Edwards how to read defenses in real time and the importance of making the right play.
"He's coaching winning basketball, so I can't be mad at it," Edwards told ESPN after Minnesota's New Year's Eve loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder. "But just sometimes I feel like the right play is me.
"It is hard, I'm not going to lie. It's hard, especially for me. I can't speak [for] Ju, but for me, it's hard. Of course, I'm only 23, so I'm going to showcase my game, but sometimes I can't. I get doubled all the time. So it's hard to find that balance of when to get off of [the ball], when to keep it and try to get going. So still trying to figure it out, honestly."
Edwards expressed similar thoughts a couple of nights later, when he was held to 15 points in a home loss to the Boston Celtics. He complained again about seeing frequent double-teams and said he didn't "want to just be passing the ball all night."
"I'm wired to be scoring the ball," said Edwards, who is averaging 25.9 points per game, shooting a career-best 42.3% from 3-point range and a career-worst 44.1% inside the arc.
In the next game, Edwards scored a career-high 53 points on 16-of-31 shooting, including 10-of-15 from long range. He had two assists and six turnovers. The Timberwolves lost to the Pistons 119-105.
Despite a season-high 53 points from Anthony Edwards, the Timberwolves were handed their 17th loss of the season by the Detroit Pistons.
"It's the balance of being a superstar and then also running that offense," DiVincenzo told ESPN. "It's like that balance in between, and I think that's what we're figuring out right now. That consistency of moving the ball, making it pop around, and when it comes back to those guys, the lanes are wide open now and it's opening up them more to get downhill and get to the shots that they want to get to."
Finch had familiarity with Randle, serving as an assistant coach for the New Orleans Pelicans when Randle had a breakout season in 2018-19. But their reunion with the Timberwolves has still featured a lot of trial-and-error tinkering.
Finch said they've "gotten closer to figuring out" how to best use Randle, who is averaging 19.6 points per game on his fewest shot attempts (14.1) since his early-career Los Angeles Lakers stint, as a scorer and facilitator. It's about when, where and how to get the ball in Randle's hands and who to have on the floor alongside him.
Finch resisted altering the starting lineup until recently, when he swapped DiVincenzo for Conley, citing a hope to jump-start Conley by giving him more ballhandling responsibilities off the bench.
The transition from the Knicks to Timberwolves had been difficult for DiVincenzo, who was coming off a career year (15.5 points per game, 40.1% 3-point shooting) playing with his former Villanova teammates Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart in New York. DiVincenzo shot only 31.9% on 3s in his first 25 games in a Timberwolves uniform; he's hit 44.8% since then.
"It's a mental game of just being aggressive and just going out there and being myself," said DiVincenzo, who will miss Friday's game with a toe injury. "There's no secret behind that for me. When I'm passive, I'm not my best self."
It has been a half-season of experimentation and inconsistency. The Wolves appeared to be on track with three consecutive wins, including two on the road earlier this month, then dropped another close game to the Memphis Grizzlies, in which they led by four points with under two minutes left, but failed to score for the rest of the game.
After a road win against the moribund Washington Wizards, the Wolves once again fell at home to the scuffling Golden State Warriors, trailing 13-0 in the game's first four minutes. The schedule doesn't get easier from here. Following Friday night's game in New York, they return home to host the NBA-leading Cleveland Cavaliers, then go on the road at Memphis and Dallas, before returning home to host three-time MVP Nikola Jokic.
And, as Conley noted, the competition in the West is too fierce to forgive stumbling much longer.
"At this point, we probably figured each other out," Edwards said. "I think the main thing is we just got haven't all been clicking on the same page at one time yet. ... We going to be all right."