There was a semblance of solace in Minnesota’s locker room after Thursday’s debacle against the New York Knicks. The gist? It was only one game. Minnesota entered that night as winners of six of its previous seven contests; a team is bound to have slipups in an 82-game campaign. Defensively, the Wolves felt like they let go of the rope against the Knicks. But in reality, Thursday was just the latest in a string of weak offensive performances for Minnesota. Entering Saturday night’s bout with the Warriors, the Wolves hadn’t scored 110 points in regulation in 12-straight games. It’s been more than a month since they crossed that threshold. The Wolves haven’t found a good offensive rhythm since roughly the first 10 to 15 games of the season. They’re currently 21st in offensive rating, scoring just 110.8 points per 100 possessions. Those struggles have all been documented repeatedly over the past month. The question is, does it matter? As Anthony Edwards noted this week, the Wolves are a defensive team, not an offensive team. Timberwolves coach Chris Finch appeared more disappointed in Minnesota’s defensive performance against New York than its offensive ineptitude. The feeling seems to be that the offense is what it is, and the defense will have to pick up any and all slack. Again, the Wolves won a lot of games over the past three weeks simply by dominating on the defensive end. They were terrible offensively for much of that stretch, but were so good defensively that it didn’t matter. They have the personnel to do that consistently. But that formula does appear to have a ceiling. Because there are limits to how bad a team can be offensively and still achieve something big. For reference, no team with an offensive rating below 112 has reached the conference finals since the 2019-20 bubble campaign. And no team with a sub-111 offensive rating has been in the NBA’s final four since Boston in 2018. Last year’s Wolves team may not have been good offensively — it ranked 17th in the NBA — but even that group scored 114.6 points per 100 possessions, leaps and bounds better than where this group is, particularly over its past 20 games. So, yes, Minnesota is a defensive team. Its success will primarily be derived from that end of the floor. But if the offense doesn’t improve significantly, this season won’t go anywhere of note. “We’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to work on both (offense and defense),” Wolves guard Mike Conley said. “We can’t take days where we take practices off, or have an easier day. We might need to be in there a little bit longer to accomplish both of those things. “We want our defense to still be good, but offensively, we’ve still got a lot of work to do, and we know it. That’s going to require a lot of time and effort to be put into that side of the ball.” Related Articles Minnesota Timberwolves | Conley’s Corner: Coaching ain’t easy Minnesota Timberwolves | Timberwolves believe they’ve found their winning formula Minnesota Timberwolves | Jace Frederick: The one who righted the Timberwolves’ ship? Mike Conley Minnesota Timberwolves | Timberwolves: Value of point guard becoming abundantly clear with Mike Conley returning Minnesota Timberwolves | Mike Conley may miss more games for the Timberwolves. How can they survive?