NBA’s worst performance of 2022: Karl-Anthony Towns and the infamous ‘We in Minnesota now’ game

“We in Minnesota now.”

Karl-Anthony Towns and the Minnesota Timberwolves were still relatively new to the playoffs back in April.

Yes, they’d taken down the L.A. Clippers in the Play-In Tournament to earn the official No. 7 seed in the West. It was their second playoff appearance since “Shrek 2” hit theaters back in 2004. Minnesota finally made it back to the postseason in 2018 thanks to Jimmy Butler bitterly dragging the team through the 82-game campaign as the young guys tried to find their footing in winning basketball. The first appearance hadn’t gone over so well, with a much better Houston Rockets team trouncing them in five games.

Towns had been miserable in that series against Houston. He was shredded on social media for being outplayed by Clint Capela, and shortly thereafter, Butler made it awkward and forced his way out of Minnesota. Towns had to regroup, as did the Wolves. They brought in D’Angelo Russell to help Towns out, both as a teammate and as one of his closest friends. They drafted Anthony Edwards with the No. 1 pick in 2020, and he immediately grabbed local and national admiration as a beaming character.

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The Wolves figured out a lot of their issues under a full season from head coach Chris Finch in 2021-22. And they found themselves back in the real playoffs to face a young but successful Memphis Grizzlies team, which was also trying to establish themselves as wiser and better beyond their years of experience. As the lower seed, the Wolves jumped all over the Grizzlies in Game 1 of the first round. Towns was spectacular. His 29-point, 13-rebound effort helped Edwards’ 36-point playoff debut (Play-In officially doesn’t count, per the league office) as the Wolves stole Game 1. Minnesota put 130 points up in Memphis against the fourth-best defense in the league.

Game 2 didn’t treat the Wolves as kindly. Memphis found a way to right the ship, obliterating the Wolves by 28 points. As the Grizzlies are wont to do, they talked a lot of trash during the drubbing of the Wolves. They never stop talking excrement to their opponents, whether they’re winning or losing. This time, they won big, but that was OK for the Wolves. They got their split on the road to open the series, and they knew going back to Minneapolis would serve them some comfort and home-cooking to take even greater control of the series.

The problem is that Towns spoke the quiet part out loud whilst trying to keep up with the Grizzlies’ motormouths.

After just over 20 minutes of play in Game 3 back in Minneapolis, Towns was mic’d up during a timeout, talking to his teammates. He was talking to Greg Monroe, happy the Wolves were blitzing the Grizzlies in Game 3. They were up 51-34 when the mic’d up segment ran. The Wolves were on pace to shut down a brazen Grizzlies team and take full control of that series.

“We in Minnesota now,” Towns said to Monroe. “Like I said after … ‘All right, cool, we gotta come back to our house now. I only seen them at their house.’”

That’s a dangerous game to partake in for Towns, the Wolves or any opponent who will be in the spotlight. Especially when mic’d up for sound. There’s a reason you usually only get boring clips created from those “candid” moments. Veterans know they’re mic’d up, and you only hear exclaims of “hustle” or “defense” or “let’s stick together.” You don’t want to give extra fuel to the fire.

Minnesota led by as many as 26 points in that game, a cushion that is supposed to be more than enough to secure a home playoff victory. Instead, the Grizzlies chipped away. Despite being in Minnesota now, the Grizzlies used a 37-12 fourth quarter to completely erase that Atlanta-Falcons-in-the-Super-Bowl level of a lead. It was the second quarter of the game in which the Grizzlies held the Wolves to 12 points. Funny enough, the other quarter was the second quarter, when that mic’d up video played.

Towns had a miserable individual game. He scored eight points in just under 33 minutes, his third single-digit scoring playoff game in eight career postseason contests to that point. He had more fouls (five) than shot attempts (four). Dating back to the Play-In win over the Clippers, Towns had now committed 19 fouls in his last four games. Memphis trailed by 25 with three minutes to go in the third quarter and outscored Minnesota 50-16 from there. The Wolves found themselves down 12 late in the fourth quarter — a 38-point turnaround.

Following the blowout loss in Game 2, Towns over and over repeated to the media that the Wolves had to play their game. They couldn’t get caught up playing like Memphis or trying to play a style that is the antithesis to what the Grizzlies do. The Wolves had to play their style and brand of basketball — saturate themselves in the kind of play that got them to that point. There was a lot of credence to that.

However, he got caught up in the other Memphis game, in which the Grizzlies try to get in your head with trash talk. Yes, the Wolves had Patrick Beverley and Edwards — two guys who are no strangers to letting the opponent know what’s happening to them and what’s coming to them throughout a game. But that’s not Towns’ game. He talked trash to them indirectly, but he managed to do it on national television for everyone to see, for everyone to hold against him if it went wrong.

And it did go wrong. It went spectacularly wrong. It was just the 32nd game in NBA history (regular season or playoffs) in which a team blew a 26-point lead. Ja Morant had no problems talking trash via Twitter after the comeback victory, using Towns’ own words against him.

Eventually, the Wolves would lose in six games. They actually rebounded in Game 4 to send it back to Memphis at 2-2 in the series. Towns bounced back with a 33-point, 14-rebound performance in Game 4. He scored and rebounded in Game 5 but struggled with turnovers (seven) in the loss. He then struggled to shoot the ball in Game 6, as the Grizzlies closed out the Wolves at the Target Center.

Towns’ second playoff series went so much better than the first one, individually, and it only led to one more game before elimination. Had he stuck to the basics while being mic’d up, maybe it fades into the ether forever. Nobody remembers it. It’s just another playoff series lost for the Wolves, and we focus on, “Hey, at least they’re making the postseason again!” type of moral victories.

That clip, however, lives on. Until the Wolves can get back to the postseason. Until the Wolves can move on to a later round and disassociate themselves with the failures of a franchise over 30-plus years.

Until the phrase “We in Minnesota now” can be a rallying cry, a moment of fear struck into the hearts of an inferior opponent, and it’s more of a T-shirt or hashtag used to galvanize a fan base rather than something to be mocked just hours later.

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(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: David Sherman / Getty Images)