Andrew Wiggins and Timberwolves do a number on Lakers

A worn Lakers team faced a young star in the making on Sunday night in Minneapolis.

By the time Andrew Wiggins was finished with them, he’d scored a career-high 47 points to lead the Minnesota Timberwolves to a 125-99 win over the Lakers at the Target Center.

After an energetic first two outings on their three-game trip, the Lakers closed it a bit sluggishly. Although they went 2-1, with wins in Sacramento and New Orleans, Sunday’s loss dropped the Lakers to 6-5, while Minnesota improved to 3-6.

“The energy wasn’t there,” Lakers forward Julius Randle said. “Playing a back-to-back is not an excuse. Energy just wasn’t there. We weren’t playing free, moving the ball, and they were getting whatever they wanted. We weren’t putting any pressure on them. . . . We tried to bring it in the third quarter but we dug ourselves too deep of a hole, and we didn’t deserve to win the game.”

The Lakers started digging that hole early. They turned the ball over nine times for 13 Minnesota points in the first half. They also made only two of 12 three-point attempts while the Timberwolves made six of 10. Wiggins had 25 points by halftime, having made nine of 12 from the field, both of his three-point attempts, and five of his six free throws.

At halftime, the Timberwolves had a 23-point lead.

Twelve of Wiggins’ 22 second-half points were from free throws. Overall the Lakers were called for 31 personal fouls, six on center Timofey Mozgov, who fouled out of the game with 8:09 remaining. Wiggins took 22 free throws in all, making 17.

“I feel like anybody in this league is capable of doing that when you go to the free-throw line that many times,” Lakers point guard D’Angelo Russell said. “It just makes the game easy for you. Especially when you can score the ball. You see it go in a few times. Rim seems like an ocean out there. He had a great game.”

Said forward Larry Nance Jr.: “Trying to guard him, be physical and also tiptoe around foul calls. He shot, what, 25 free throws? Twenty-two? It’s crazy. Good for him.”

As they have in many of their wins, the Lakers tried to fight back from the double-digit deficit.

They outscored the Timberwolves 26-18 in the third quarter. Guard Lou Williams contributed his usual fourth-quarter burst, scoring 13 points to finish with a team-high 17 overall. But the closest the Lakers could come was within eight points — at which point Wiggins shot five consecutive free throws, making three. Minnesota built its lead from there.

“The only point I realized, ‘All right we’re kind of out of this one,’ was [with] three minutes left,” Nance said. “There was always a sense of we can come back from this. We’ve come back from this. We never felt defeated.”

Like the Lakers, Minnesota was playing the second of back-to-back games. They lost to the Clippers on Saturday night, their first game back home after a three-game trip on which they lost twice.

For the Lakers, it was the third road game in four days.

And while Coach Luke Walton didn’t want his team to use that as an excuse, he did empathize with his players, having been one himself not long ago. So after this loss, despite the sometimes low energy, Walton was positive with his team.

“There’s not many teams in the NBA that go three in four nights on the road and can bring it on that last night,” Walton said. “We’ll continue to get better. At that point it becomes more mental than anything else. We didn’t have that tonight.”

tania.ganguli@latimes.com

Follow Tania Ganguli on Twitter @taniaganguli