The Timberwolves‘ Saturday night loss to the Thunder was probably doomed by turnovers on more than one-fifth of their plays, but Anthony Edwards of Minnesota felt that the officials’ easy calls against OKC’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander also played a significant role in the game.
Edwards spoke about trying to stop Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ,
“It’s hard to, man, with the calls that Shai gets. It’s hard, it’s hard to shut him down,” “Can’t touch him at any of the time of the game so it’s super hard. That team is a good team, especially when you get calls like that. It’s hard.”
Gilgeous-Alexander made 10-of-22 shots for 32 points in the end, while he converted 12-of-13 free throw tries. The front-runner for MVP only made three trips to the free-throw line in the second half after making four attempts in the first quarter and six more in the second.
Anthony Edwards on trying to shutdown the OKC Thunder. pic.twitter.com/46H2LomOot
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Edwards went to the free throw line ten times but only converted six of those attempts, as he was limited to 19 points on 6-of-10 shooting. With 3.1 seconds remaining, he had three chances to tie the game, but he missed them all. There wasn’t a noticeable difference in free throw efficiency between elite players because Karl-Anthony Towns also had 10 attempts and made all of them.