It’s not Anthony Edwards. It’s not Rudy Gobert. It’s not a lack of talent. Is it just the absence of Karl-Anthony Towns? Why are the Timberwolves (6-5) struggling early in the season?

Cities East having a great first season with the Knicks. He is averaging 24.5 points, 12.4 rebounds and shooting 51.1% from 3-point range. His player efficiency rating (PER) is fifth in the league at 27.1, behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (27.4), Giannis Antetokounmpo (30.2), Anthony Davis (31.4) and Nikola Jokic ( 33.4).

You have to scroll all the way down to No. 41 in the PER rankings to find Minnesota’s No. 1 player, and it’s not Edwards. It’s Naz Reid with a PER of 20.0. Edwards ranks 47th with a PER of 19.6. Just facts…

Maybe the Timberwolves are simply going through some growing pains after trading Towns for Randle and Donte DiVincenzo. This would make sense because players don’t freeze overnight. Hell, even the Knicks are a little slow with a 5-5 record.

Randle has filled up the stat sheet, averaging 20.2 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.4 assists while shooting 52.0% overall and 38.3% from 3. The worrying number associated with Randle is that of rebounds. Never in his career has he averaged less than 8 rebounds per game. At 6.6 this season, he is well below his career average of 9.3.

DiVincenzo has has been a pest on the defensive end of the court, but his shooting has been horrible through 11 games. The number to focus on is his 3-point shooting. A whopping 78.2% of his attempts come from behind the arc and he makes just 32.9% of them. He shot 40.1 percent from deep last season and finished fourth in the NBA with 3.5 3-pointers made per game.

This isn’t the level of play the Timberwolves thought they were getting from DiVincenzo when they made the Towns trade. Remember, DiVincenzo was a monster for the Knicks last season. He averaged 17.7 points in 63 games as a starter during the regular season and was closer to 20 per game in February, March and April. He came away with performances of 25, 28, 35 and 39 points in the playoffs against the Pacers.

DiVincenzo hasn’t scored more than 16 points in a game this season with Minnesota.

As easy as it is to point to Towns’ absence, Randle not rebounding and DiVincenzo struggling with his shot, it’s even easier to identify Minnesota’s turnover woes.

The Wolves recorded a game-high 23 turnovers in their NBA Cup loss to the lowly Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night. It was their third straight game with at least 20 turnovers. With 16.1 turnovers per game, the Wolves rank fifth in ball security.

Edwards had six turnovers in back-to-back games against the Blazers and Heat, but he only had one on second-chance play against Portland on Tuesday night. But just as Edwards was cutting down on his turnovers, Randle, Gobert, DiVincenzo and Jaden McDaniels had four turnovers each.

How do Wolves solve these problems? More effort from Randle on the glass seems like an easy solution to his problem. DiVincenzo simply coming out of a shooting funk would solve his problem. Gelling the list over time would eliminate the cities problem. And taking care of the ball is the easy solution to the turnover problem.

The one thing there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer to is the loss of the defensive identity that made the Wolves so fierce last season. Finding an answer to that question might be something players need to discover from the inside out, because, hypothetically, the roster is overall better defensively with DiVincenzo and Randle than it was with Towns.