Anthony Edwards sounds defeated when discussing Minnesota’s offense, or lack thereof. When asked what he wants to see from that side of the floor, or what needs to change, the Timberwolves’ star guard either doesn’t have answers, or doesn’t want to reveal them. He noted people wouldn’t like what he’d say, so he’d keep his thoughts on the matter to himself. “We’re not an offensive team. We’re a defensive team,” Edwards said. “I don’t think there’s going to be too much change.” Edwards — one of the league’s most explosive players — is not getting to the rim with any consistency. Much of his scoring is coming off jumpers. He’s resigned to that being his reality. “If you watch the game, there’s nothing for me to do when I get downhill,” Edwards said. “Everybody want me to get downhill. I know that’s my strength. I get to the rim, lay the ball up, dunk the ball. But I can’t do nothing if there’s no lanes. It’s not open. “Every team we play do a great job of sitting in the gaps. When I get to the rim, (they’re) putting four people at the rim. I’m sorry, people, there’s nothing I can do with going to the hole right now.” The times Edwards does get easy rim attacks often come off opportunities when he’s playing off the catch against a shifted defense. Such instances are always the result of ball movement that is too infrequent on a possession-by-possession basis. It was nonexistent for large stretches of Thursday’s blowout loss to the Knicks. The disastrous second quarter was plagued by countless trips down the floor in which Minnesota didn’t attempt a single pass. How can the Wolves limit such stretches? “I don’t know, man,” Edwards said. “I play a part in the no-pass offense. A lot of us do. I think that really happens when the lead starts to get out of hand. But we just got to trust it.” It makes sense, frankly. When times get tough, that’s when teams have to lean on their foundation, their identity. They must rely on their repeatable actions that they know generate productive possessions that end in good looks. The problem for Minnesota is, it isn’t quite yet known what those are. “We don’t have no identity. We know I’mma shoot a bunch of shots. We know (Julius Randle) gonna shoot a bunch of shots. That’s all we know,” Edwards said. “We don’t really know anything else.” The result of all that is evident in the struggle that’s painted perfectly by the numbers. Minnesota hasn’t scored more than 110 points in regulation in more than a month. The Wolves are a .500 team over that 12-game stretch, with the league’s best defense and the 26th-ranked offense that averages just 1.06 points per possession. That’s not a formula for winning at the level Minnesota envisioned for itself at the season’s outset. That’s the clear problem. But what are the solutions? Wolves veteran floor general Mike Conley is usually a good source of those. He noted, given its personnel, Minnesota needs pristine spacing to operate at a high level offensively. That’s step No. 1. That takes a general feel, and knowledge for the game and your teammates, that the Wolves are struggling with at the moment. It can be assisted through added structure that Conley insinuated Minnesota may currently require. With set plays comes preset, ideal spacing. “Calling more plays allows us to get into a set where we know whoever has the ball knows exactly what the next read is and the guy cutting knows where they’re supposed to be going. So everything is a little bit more crisp, and cuts are harder and everything is a little bit easier for guys with the ball,” Conley said. “You don’t want to be robotic in nature, but a lot of it is a structured mindset where you run to a spot, an X on the floor where, regardless of what it looks like.” On top of that, Conley said there needs to be more energy put into things like cutting and ball movement to create layups and two on one opportunities. Those are basic tenants of offense that coaches emphasize from grade-school levels, but Minnesota is having issues putting them into action. Because it doesn’t feel natural to many of the Wolves. “It’s got to be like a habit for each individual guy. Everybody coming in here has their own habits, their own strengths and weaknesses — some of them more glaring than others,” Conley said. “For guys who need to work on it, we need to double down in practice on what we have to do to make those individuals better at cutting, spacing, pushing the ball, being more aggressive, making the right reads on time. A lot of it has to do with us individually, being real with ourselves and saying, ‘I’ve got to be better at this.’” Currently, Minnesota doesn’t do what good offensive teams accomplish on a possession-by-possession basis, getting through actions — sometimes multiple within one trip down the floor — with primary options and then intuitive counters to attack whatever the defense presents. The Wolves don’t get to second-side actions. But why? The obvious answer after Thursday’s loss was Minnesota misses Karl-Anthony Towns. And that’s fair. He’s an all-star who can stretch the floor and score in a variety of ways. But the Wolves also played high-level offense when Towns missed a month of action in the spring. Why haven’t the Wolves been able to recapture that formula? “It’s still like continuity. I think we had Naz in at the time (last year), whoever was playing the four — Kyle (Anderson). Guys we’d known for two years and had been a part of our offense and had to play those minutes,” Conley said. “And now we’re adjusting to Julius’ game and guys being in different roles and Donte (DiVincenzo) coming in. We’re just trying to fill in those spots. It’s not easy to replace the gravity of what KAT brings just being out there as a shooter. He didn’t have to do anything but stand in a spot and people aren’t going to move to help, so it’s just a different kind of look. “It’s something that we’re just going to have to continually work on as a team to help each other get through.” Related Articles Minnesota Timberwolves | Timberwolves’ offense bottoms out in Karl-Anthony Towns’ return Minnesota Timberwolves | Dane Mizutani: Karl-Anthony Towns shows Timberwolves what they’re missing Minnesota Timberwolves | He returned to Minnesota as a visitor, but Karl-Anthony Towns will always view this as a home Minnesota Timberwolves | Karl-Anthony Towns’ lasting legacy in Minnesota: The unselfish star who wanted everyone to be happy Minnesota Timberwolves | Mike Conley, Rudy Gobert know what former Timberwolves teammate Karl-Anthony Towns can expect in ’emotional’ return Thursday