The Minnesota Timberwolves were back in Minneapolis for practice on Tuesday. A bit jet lagged? Yes. Ready for the regular season? “The lights are coming on now,” said Jimmy Butler. “This is when the real MFers come to play.”
Tom Thibodeau, Nemanja Bjelica and Gorgui Dieng all were available at around 5:00 pm, but Butler addressed the media about an hour later. He was busy playing an informal one-on-one tournament with a few guys that stuck around after hours, including Jamal Crawford, Marcus Georges-Hunt and Amile Jefferson.
“That’s kind of getting the jet lag out of your body, to really get to move,” said Butler. “We weren’t going very fast at all. It was all about moving around, sweating a little bit and waking the body up.”
It also was an effort to get tired and try to wake up at a normal time after the China trip.
Generally speaking, the players spoke fondly of the trip, despite splitting games with the Golden State Warriors and the recovery from the time change. It was a bonding experience and a way to showcase the team in front of NBA fans in China.
“It’s really, it’s grown,” said Thibodeau when asked about the NBA’s fan base in China. “I was actually out there for the first China games, with Yao, and just to see how much it’s grown. Yao had a lot to do with it.”
The Timberwolves won the first game against the Warriors 111-97, but fell 142-110 in the second game.
“You learn from each game,” said Thibodeau. “You’re playing against the Warriors: I thought we played well in the first game, and the second game got away from us in the second half. It’s a four-point game with about eight minutes in the third, and hopefully we learn from it.
“We had some bad possessions, and when a team can shoot the three the way they did, it got away from us. I think we have to have an understanding of how hard we have to close out on every play, and that’s a scenario we can improve upon.”
Unsurprisingly, the defensive-minded coach feels that scoring is not an issue for this year’s team, but team defense is.
“We’ve got a lot of guys that can score, and I think that the unselfishness was very good. Probably a higher amount of turnovers than I would like,” he said.
“Defensively we have a lot of work to do as a team. Offensively, I thought the ball movement, pushing the ball, that was very, very good.”
The two games in China and the game against the Los Angeles Lakers in Anaheim are the only three preseason games the Wolves will play this year. Six to seven games is more typical.
“That’s the challenge for us,” he said. “We gotta be ready when the ball goes up in San Antonio.
“We’ll have one inter-squad game, that’ll be our fourth,” he added. “But we have some days to get some quality practice time in.”
He said that he liked what he saw from the second unit, and had some thoughts on specific players:
- On Andrew Wiggins: “He was in quite a bit this summer, so we felt good about that. But it’s not just him, it’s how he gets acclimated to his teammates and they have to learn him, and then there are a lot of things that we have to improve upon as a team.”
- On Bjelica returning from injury: “It’s preseason, and he was out for a long time, so he’s gotta work at it every day and he’s gotta get that intensity level back up, and we’ll go from there.”
- On Teague learning the system: “He’s run a lot of the stuff that we’ve run before, so I think that’ll help him.”
Thibodeau watched a bit of the one-on-one tournament, and was absolutely geeked. He couldn’t stop grinning. He loves the game, and apparently likes the work the guys are putting in.
“Is Thibs still over there? Exactly. I don’t think he’s gonna give us any time off,” Butler responded rhetorically when asked if the team will give them two days in a row off before the season starts.
“I like it though. Good. Good for him. Good for us. We don’t need time off, we’re young.
“Except for Jamal.”
Here’s a clip from Butler’s availability:
He also had a great quote about Thibodeau after I stopped recording. He was asked if his coach always has an answer to his inquiries about basketball.
“He always has his answer. If it’s the answer, we don’t know. But it’s Thibs’ answer, and it probably comes with some analogy that has something to do with the Patriots. Yeah, they’re a good football team, but I mean Broncos, Steelers, Patriots — I don’t know, are they the same?” he said.
“But no, the guy is constantly in there watching film, so it’s like ‘Yo Thibs, remember this play?’ and he can beat you to it: ‘Yeah, I know exactly what play you’re talking about at 2:53 in the second quarter.’
“It’s like ‘Damn, Thibs,’ but he knows, so you can’t really question him. You just gotta ride with him because damn, he’s in there watching more film than anybody, so does he have the answers? Hmm… Does he have his answer? Definitely.”
Here’s Bjelica on playing with the second unit:
And finally Dieng on bonding in China:
Tim Faklis will be covering most of the practices this week. Follow him (@timfaklis). We’ll also be doing a Wolves Wired with Lee Jenkins, who has a cover story on Butler, so look out for that.
Finally, I’ll be on Locked On Wolves with Colton tonight, which will be available tomorrow morning.
