He missed the chance to play in Boston, where he played his first two NBA seasons. “You want to take care of your body first when you have an injury,” Gomes said. “It’s not about playing a game against your former team, it’s all about playing the rest of the season. I’d rather make sure I’m 100 percent after having a full practice.”
“The past eight or nine games, I’ve kind of been getting my rhythm back,” Jefferson said. “I kind of thought I was going to pick up where I left off, but it’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, I do,’’ Perkins said when asked whether he felt bad for Jefferson. “[But] the scary part about it is they got a young team. We got an old team. So maybe in three or four years it will be turned around. So you never know.’’
“It came from our lack of organization, our lack of ball movement and our lack of aggression offensively,” he said.
“Our alignment is set up so our transition defense is already organized to begin with. When we weren’t organized, they were just pushing the ball down the floor, and we didn’t have a chance to get back on defense.”
Minnesota responded with a decidedly better effort in the second half, outscoring Boston 63-56 to pull within 12 points in the fourth quarter. But the hole proved too deep to climb out.