After nearly three weeks on the road, the Iowa Wolves finally get a game back at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.
To most of them, it’s home for now, but not necessarily what they see as their final destination. For the fans, it’s a pro-level basketball experience that has flashes of an NBA game, but with a twist.
Inside the arena, it almost felt like the Minnesota State Fair. Stand after stand featuring deep-fried sweets, gargantuan-sized beer and a variety of in-game promotions featured everywhere.
Inside the curtain-drawn entryway stood the prepared game floor, featuring the Wolves’ brand new logo freshly painted at center court.
Less recent, hanging from the rafters is Kurt Warner’s retired number from his days with the Iowa Barnstormers. An entire section behind the opposing team basket is removed for promotions, special seating and another place for advertising and ticket sales.
The entire upper deck is curtained off, but there is a stage set up. It’s Faith and Family Night, which didn’t really show itself until the after the game, when Christian singer Josh Wilson performed.
The NBA G League is the minor-league affiliate of the NBA, but it works at a completely different pace for a different demographic of fans.
The Iowa Wolves – known before this season as the Iowa Energy – have been owned by the Phoenix Suns, Chicago Bulls, Washington Wizards, New Orleans Hornets and Memphis Grizzlies at varying points of their existence. In the then-NBA D League’s younger stages, several of those teams were affiliated at the same time.
But this is the first time a direct affiliation resulted in a total rebrand. With the obvious benefits of the switch in mind, an adjustment has still taken place.
But the team has taken it in stride.
“Every week is new here, from the front office to the people in the business side to our basketball staff,” Wolves head coach Scott Roth told Zone Coverage. “It’s been a grinding, fun way to start things.”
But Sunday against the Erie Bayhawks, even before anyone would be in to see this product in action after a week-long road trip, the Iowa Wolves players were out warming up.
Some arrived in a small team bus, decked out in blue, green and the Wolves logo. While the entire team eventually arrivee, it was Justin Patton, Anthony Brown and Amile Jefferson who warmed up first.
While Patton is the only top-20 pick to spend his entire rookie season in the G League, he seems to have adapted to it quickly. Same goes for Jefferson and Brown, who have yet to reach their 45-day limit in NBA time on their two-way contracts.
It’s only a couple hours before game time, so they immediately set in for drills with assistant coaches before heading back into the tunnel. Their warmups are purposeful and efficient.
Even though they say they don’t have a ton of direct communication with the Timberwolves while they’re down with Iowa – specifically Tom Thibodeau – they know how important their time with Roth and the Iowa Wolves can be if they ever want meaningful minutes with the big club.
And considering the desire every G League player has to get to that next level, it adds to the intensity of the games and practices.
“I’ve always said, this is the toughest league in the world,” Roth said. “It’s tougher than the NBA to play in. It’s tougher than Europe to play in. You have to be mentally ready to play because you have a lot of guys you’ve never heard of before just dying to eat you up.”
The same goes for former NBA players like Shawne Williams, Perry Jones III and Elijah Millsap, who all make their way in to warm up at varying points of the afternoon. All of them are eager to find their ways back into the league at some point.
As the game is set to begin, the differences between the NBA and the G League start to set in.
The intro hype video is very reminiscent of what a minor league team represents: fun and more casual feeling of excitement, but with the caveat that a team’s best player might be called up on a dime. As a result, no players were shown in the video.
The crowd is in decent quantity considering the newness of the product, but still sparse enough that you can still hear each team’s bench as they celebrate a Jeremy Evans dunk or a Wes Washpun layup – especially the latter, considering Washpun’s hometown status and Northern Iowa ties.
You can hear Roth’s support from the sideline, aware of the development-oriented coaching situation he finds himself in. You could hear Roth yell “Good job, Perry!” after a Jones assist to Patton, or even a supportive “Let’s go white!” after a group mistake on the defensive end.
But everything Roth implores his team to do on the floor is similar to what Wolves fans have grown accustomed to seeing on the Timberwolves floor.
While this is the first year the Timberwolves have had Iowa as a single-team affiliate, it took no time at all for Roth to incorporate a lot of what happens at the Target Center in Des Moines.
“We came down and tried to hit the reset button, build a foundation and establish a new culture for Thibs, and kind of build the ground up,” Roth said. “These are the first steps of it.”
Like Karl-Anthony Towns, Patton often works from above the break, sets off-ball screens and has the freedom to both shoot from deep or drive the lane.
Brown’s role mirrors Jimmy Butler’s in some ways; he has the freedom to shoot from anywhere on the floor, and is often seen running off stagger screens from the bottom of the key.
He and Melo Trimble – who plays in a Jeff Teague-style role at the point – have the most freedom to dribble, while the rest of the team is much quicker to keep moving the ball.
Jefferson plays a similar game to Taj Gibson, both in role and ferocity. He’s the most fundamentally-sound defensive player on the team and is always the first guy to get down the floor on the fast break.
Even in the stands, you can see the culture shift starting. While the Iowa Wild have called the same arena home since 2008, fans still come to Wolves games in Trimble jerseys, and even in Butler jerseys. Building a brand new level of culture can be challenging, but the process seems to be starting.
Proximity plays a big part in this. Minneapolis is just three-and-a-half hours from Des Moines, making it easier for basketball fans to pick their favorite team.
“The past three years, when we were with the Grizzlies, you didn’t see a single person here because it was the Grizzlies. [You don’t see people] wearing a Grizzlies jersey or anything like that,” said David Levy, chief revenue officer of the Wolves, who has been with the team at different capacities since 2011. “You come to one of our games now, you see people wearing a Jimmy Butler jersey. We see Minnesota stuff all over the place.”
But they’re also struggling to win consistently. Currently 10th in the Western Conference and on an eight-game losing streak, their chances of making the playoffs have become increasingly slim.
Their struggles to keep the BayHawks out of the lane Sunday suggested poor defensive chemistry, and an inability to communicate on that end.
But that might be, at least in-part, the product of the league they play in. They’re 15th in defensive rating on the year and are somehow in the upper half of the league amidst the eight-game losing streak that took them out of the playoff hunt.
But while wins and team results certainly matter to Roth and his team, that might be less of a concern to the big club than getting the most out of their more financially-invested pieces. As Patton, Jefferson and Brown get playing time. It’s not the NBA, but it is the system they’d play in if they were in the NBA.
And while the setting might be different, the crowds more sparse and the travel a bit less luxurious, the basketball remains the same. All the way down to the sets they’re running, the jerseys they’re wearing, and the name of the team.
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