Minnesota’s offense hit a major snag in Tuesday’s Game 1 loss to Golden State.

The Wolves scored just 88 points to open the Western Conference semifinals, just 31 in a putrid first half.

Minnesota missed its first 15 3-point attempts and shot poorly throughout the evening. Missed shots are one thing. The Timberwolves missed 40 3-point attempts in their Game 5 win over the Los Angeles Lakers last week — an NBA record at the time. But that didn’t bother Minnesota coach Chris Finch much. Those were good shots that night.

Many of these were not.

“Obviously, we couldn’t hit a shot,” Finch said. “But I didn’t like the fact that we couldn’t repeatedly generate good shots. We should’ve been able to.”

But doing so requires more effort against Golden State than it does against opponents. The Warriors had the No. 1 defense in the NBA after acquiring Jimmy Butler at the trade deadline. Tuesday marked the fourth time already this postseason in which Golden State held its opponent to fewer than 94 points.

The Warriors will be severely hindered by Steph Curry’s absence over the next week-plus. He is their offense. Golden State figures to struggle to score without its superstar guard.

The Warriors’ path forward in this series is likely preventing Minnesota from following theirs, and the Timberwolves happily obliged Tuesday by not making any of the efforts necessary to break down a defense that refuses to crack at the first sign of an action.

“We just didn’t work hard enough for that second and third look,” veteran point guard Mike Conley said. “There were times where they close out hard on the corner and we make the extra drive, and then we’d get everybody kind of crowded in an area instead of getting out for that re-spacing and swing, swing type action.

“That’s what you’re going to have to do against them. They’re a very good defensive team, and they load up really well. So we have to move them around. In order to do that, we have to move our body and make the right reads.”

Legitimate execution is required. That hasn’t been the case for much of the last two-plus months for Minnesota, which closed the season against a parade of bad defenses and then in Round 1 got a Lakers team that couldn’t stay in front of Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle — and refused to rotate when forced to do so.

Golden State crossed all of its “t”s and dotted all of its “i”s on the defensive end Tuesday. The Timberwolves looked like they were waiting for the open shot to magically appear in the first half of Game 1.

But Minnesota has to compromise the Warriors to create advantages. They won’t reveal themselves naturally.

“The easy play is going to be there. We have to make them on time. We have to not settle for that first shot, we have to not settle for the (isolations),” Conley said. “We have to continue to work for it — drive it one more time, crack the paint, make them work for it one more time. Throw it to the guy up top, let him make another play, let him make another drive. It requires a little bit more energy, and we just couldn’t find that.”

Minnesota did miss some decent looks Tuesday, and Conley said those need to be converted. But he also added that those shots often came from broken plays. There was no natural rhythm with which the Wolves played. The offensive process was poor.

“It’s just maybe not the rhythm we need to be playing in right now. We’ve got to establish a better rhythm,” Finch said. “(The Warriors) did a good job of closing out. I thought there were a lot of open guys next to the shooter. I thought we could’ve made one more pass to keep them on the run a little bit more.”

The coach noted it all starts with the team’s best player, Edwards.

“I thought he struggled, and then you could just kind of see the light go out a little bit for a while,” Finch said. “Then, obviously, we had to try to get him going in the second half. I think it was one of those games where he kind of came out with a predetermined mindset of what he was trying to do rather than just play the game that was in front of him.”

And everyone paid the price. Conley suggested adjustments will be made ahead of Thursday’s Game 2, but those may be simpler than you’d suspect.

“When you play an elite defense, it brings you back to the ABCs of basketball,” Conley said. “The little things matter more. You’re not just going to pick a matchup and iso and get something out of it. You have to move it two and three times. You have to cut. You have to space correctly. All those things matter. And we just didn’t have that (in Game 1).”