Karl-Anthony Towns sat at his locker with his hands buried in his face shortly after the Timberwolves’ loss to Utah at Target Center on Monday night.

And that’s exactly how he stayed for the next few minutes.

“I just couldn’t move,” Towns said later. “I’m just thinking. I’m a very emotional player. I play with a lot of passion, and I just came into this locker room after the game and I’m just emotionally drained.”

That comes with the territory when you’re an integral part of a promising team that has stumbled out of the gates with a 5-12 record. But Towns has taken the anguish to another level. More than once after a loss this season he has tried to shoulder the blame for the Timberwolves’ shortcomings. Monday was no different.

“Game in and game out, the more losses we keep accumulating, the more it feels like it’s my fault,” Towns said. “I’ve got to look myself in the mirror and I’ve got to play better. I’ve got to play at a level where we can’t lose and just help my teammates out the best I can. I didn’t do that tonight. Haven’t did it recently.

“These losses fall on my shoulders. This is no one else’s fault – none of the coaching staff, none of my teammates. It’s my fault,” Towns said. “I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault but myself, and it’s something that I’ve got to fix. It’s something that, so far in the season, has been me. I’ve got to change. I’ve got to change for the better for us. I guess it’s back to the drawing board tomorrow.”

Or later that night. Towns posted two Snapchats after the game. The first came at 10:47 p.m., with a picture of a basketball court. The second Snap, featuring the same court, was at 1:17 a.m. The second Snap featured the text, “no excuses.”

He’s clearly carrying the burden of the team’s early missteps, but insists he can carry it.

“I never said it was going to be easy, but it’s something I know I can deal with,” Towns said. “Does it make sleeping hard at night? Yeah. But I show up at the same time every day to practice. Always the first one in, try to be the last one out, and I put the work in. I trust what I do. I work tremendously hard on my craft. I take this craft very seriously and treat it with the utmost respect. But I’ve got to do more. I’ve just got to do more.”

That’s a lot of pressure for a 21-year-old in his second NBA season to place on himself. How many times can you continue to fall on the same sword? And it’s not the mantra preached by Wolves coach Tom Thibodeau. Things go well, Thibodeau said, when the entire team is connected. And Towns can say whatever he wants after a game, but Thibodeau said it’s what he does on the court – things like defending the pick and roll, boxing out his man, passing up good shots for great ones and sprinting back every possession – that are important.

“When things don’t go our way as a team, the tendency is to try to lift a group out by yourself, and you can’t do that,” Thibodeau said. “Although the intentions are good, sometimes they’re misguided. We have to remain connected, and that’s the challenge. … When things get tough, if you go off on your own, that’s when you break down. That’s where we have to grow some, and I think that comes.”

Timberwolves forward Gorgui Dieng wasn’t made aware of what Towns said until Tuesday, at which point he quickly rebuffed any notion that the blood of Minnesota’s slow start resides only on Towns’ hands.

“It takes 15 guys to make a right thing and 15 guys to do the wrong stuff, so it’s a team sport,” Dieng said. “I would never take it that way, and nobody looks at him on this team and says you’ve got to solve the problem. I think this is our problem. We’ve got to do everything as a team. If somebody mess up, the four guys have got to be there to cover for him.”

“It doesn’t fall on any one person,” Thibodeau said. “It falls on all of us.”