The Minnesota Timberwolves come home to Minneapolis for the first time in the 2025-26 season, hosting the Indiana Pacers on Sunday.
Indiana, playing the second leg of a weekend back-to-back, is off to a sluggish start after reaching only the second NBA Finals in franchise history.
The Pacers lost two-time All-NBA point guard Tyrese Haliburton to an Achilles’ injury in Game 7 of their Finals loss to Oklahoma City. Indiana lost its season opener in a Finals rematch with the Thunder, 141-135 in overtime, then opened the back-to-back with a 128-103 blowout setback at Memphis.
Compounding Indiana’s unfortunate start, Bennedict Mathurin — the Pacers’ leading scorer in the first two games — came out of Saturday’s loss with foot soreness.
Indiana coach Rick Carlisle told reporters in his postgame press conference that the Pacers training staff would evaluate Mathurin before Wednesday’s visit to Dallas, but expressed doubt that the guard would be able to receive an MRI before Sunday.
In the meantime, the potential of playing without Mathurin complicates the offensive gameplan for an Indiana lineup adjusting to a new-look roster.
“Without playmakers, the game is much more difficult,” Carlisle said, noting guard Taelon Peter also is hobbled with a groin injury that limited him to just two minutes on Saturday. “On paper, we might have 10 or 11 guys (at Minnesota). We’ll see.”
Minnesota split its season-opening road trip with a 118-114 win at Portland on Wednesday, but gave up 49 points to Luka Doncic in a 128-110 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday.
Anthony Edwards scored 31 points in the loss, following up a franchise record for most points scored in a season opener with his 41-point performance in Portland.
Edwards is coming off a 2024-25 season in which he scored a Timberwolves-record 2,177 points, resulting in his second All-NBA selection and a 27.6-point per game average. Minnesota advanced to the Western Conference Finals as a No. 6 seed.
Two games into their follow-up, the Timberwolves are well off their defensive rate of a season ago that was the fifth stingiest in the NBA. Minnesota held opponents to 109.3 points per game.
“Defense is certainly not where it needs to be,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “(We are) not dictating at the point of attack. There’s no aggressiveness to it at all. The fly-around mentality behind it is just not quite there.”
The Trail Blazers and Lakers shot a combined 58.9% inside the 3-point arc against Minnesota the first two games. Two-point field-goal shooting vexed Indiana in its loss at Memphis, with the Pacers going just 22-of-49.
Pascal Siakam, whose 20.2 points per game led the NBA’s seventh-most prolific scoring offense in 2024-25 (117.4 points per game), finished with just 13 points on 5-of-12 shooting on Saturday.
Siakam will pair up opposite Minnesota’s Julius Randle, who is coming off a 26-point, nine-rebound and six-assist effort in Friday’s loss.
Randle was Minnesota’s second-leading scorer a season ago at 18.7 points per game, which was his personal lowest output since averaging 16.1 points per game with the Lakers in 2017-18.
–Field Level Media
