It looked like the Minnesota Timberwolves were in for a special Monday night. At halftime of the team’s game against the Charlotte Hornets, Karl-Anthony Towns scored 44 points, the most in a first half in recorded NBA history. And at the end of the game, Towns set his career-high, going for 62 points on 21-for-35 shooting with 10 made threes.
Despite that, the Hornets won. After outscoring Minnesota by 18 points in the fourth quarter, Charlotte was able to pick up an improbable, 128-125 win, which marked the third time in the last 21 games that the Hornets were able to come out on top. Unsurprisingly, Timberwolves coach Chris Finch was rather upset after the game, saying that while the team is inevitably going to “feed the hot hand,” they need to “get back to doing the right things” at a certain point.
Chris Finch continued to rip the Timberwolves’ performance tonight
Also said KAT was “hunting a big number” pic.twitter.com/yRdNAKR61o
— Oh no he didn’t (@ohnohedidnt24) January 23, 2024
“There’s a lot of ways to be immature, a lot of ways to be immature,” Finch said. “And there was a lot of immature performances here throughout the roster. We totally disrespected the game, ourselves, and we got exactly what we deserved.”
Finch also thought that Towns was trying to hunt a big scoring night, although he conceded that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing while his shots were falling.
“For a while, it was going, but down the stretch, it kinda dried up for us,” Finch said.