Kyrie Irving and Luca Doncic lead the Mavericks past the Timberwolves 120-114

Coach Chris Finch said a lot of the responsibility for that falls on the guards. Edwards had six boards, Jaden McDaniels had four and DiVincenzo had two. With Towns no longer on the team, it changes the way these guards have to think about rebounding. The Wolves ranked ninth in defensive rebound rate last season, up from 26th the previous season.

“KAT used to be a big rebounder, and obviously the length of him and Rudy made the difference,” Finch said. “We don’t have that at the moment. It has to be a different way of thinking. It has to be that you have to take care of yourself and strike early. That’s something we’re not doing at the moment.”

As for transition defense, Finch said the Wolves were too focused on matching up in transition rather than coming back quickly and finding the matchups on the go. This was a problem from the start, as Mavericks center Daniel Gafford had a party on the sidelines with eight early points.

“We're worried about whether we can keep up with our guy rather than protecting the rim first and then talking our way back into matches,” Randle said. “We have to protect the rim every time. We gave up 20 in transition, and 10 or 12 of them just had to be like free layups. So we halved that, we halved the second chance points we gave up, we win the game by 10.”

Randle is new here, but he echoed many of his teammates' sentiments after last year's playoff series against the Mavericks: If only they had done this or that better, they would have won. Dallas reminded the new Wolves that they have many areas to address if they want to compete.