A million things could happen between now and Wednesday.
The Timberwolves could climb all the way up (technically) to the No. 4 seed. They could also miss the playoffs entirely. They could end up with two draft picks or no draft picks. The scenarios are finite, but feel endless.
I’ve posted my thoughts all season, and the stakes have gotten high. Everybody has questions at this point in the season, so I opened up the mailbag to those on Twitter.
We got enough questions to make this into two parts (thank you for that!). This is part one:
Since Rudy Gobert returned from injury, the Utah Jazz have been the third-best team in the West. You can make the argument they’ve been a step ahead of the injury-riddled Warriors, even.
They have the best defensive rating in the NBA since mid-January and play as a team on offense. They rely on Donovan Mitchell to score the bulk of their points but rarely play isolation ball to get it done.
The brand of basketball they play is aesthetically pleasing, and the level of defense they play has been historically elite. Their defensive rating since Gobert’s return — he came back Jan. 19 — is 98.1. No team has had a better defensive rating since the Pistons, Pacers and Spurs — all in the 2003-04 season.
The Wolves beat the Jazz twice this year, but at this point, getting Utah to six games might be their ceiling.
They’re scoring more points than the teams they’re playing.
My serious answer: Like the Wolves, the Spurs, Pelicans, Thunder, Nuggets, Blazers and Jazz know what’s at stake. As a result, they’ve elevated their games and are desperate to get in the best playoff position they can.
The Wolves hit their hottest run in January — the Jazz and Blazers hit their stride in March. It looks like April is going to be a friend to Denver and New Orleans.
The Wolves still control their own destiny, but need to hold on and hope for the best.
Figuring out what went wrong is important for all the obvious reasons, but I find that picking who is most to blame lets everyone else off the hook. So, not in an attempt to avoid the question, I’ll look at a few candidates.
If the Timberwolves miss the playoffs, Tom Thibodeau’s name is certain to come up. He came into Minnesota with a reputation as a defensive guru, and with the exception of a couple strong months, the Wolves haven’t made their way out of the bottom-five in defense since he arrived.
There are problems offensively, too. His players still contend he’s pushing for them to shoot more 3s, but they remain towards the bottom in both makes and attempts. And if the reason they aren’t taking them is the personnel, that blame falls on POBO Thibodeau.
Past the minutes and the Derrick Rose conundrum, there are areas of criticism for the second-year Wolves coach.
But he’s not the only one. And it’s important to remember that this team has 45 wins for the first time since Latrell Sprewell and Sam Cassell were Timberwolves. Thibodeau deserves credit for the uptick in success.
What about Jimmy Butler — of no fault of his own, of course — missing several games with a number of injuries? What about Andrew Wiggins still trying to find his true and most efficient version of himself at the NBA level? What about Jeff Teague’s early-season struggles? What about Nemanja Bjelica’s continued inconsistency?
There is a long list of what and who is to blame for past issues and challenges, whether the Wolves miss the playoffs or not. Blaming it on one person or thing is easy, but there’s more to it than that.
Butler didn’t look rusty at all in his first game back, and the Wolves looked like a reborn team in the second half against Los Angeles, but the idea of them turning back into the team we saw in mid-January feels unlikely.
That team was so good defensively that, despite the early-season struggles they encountered on that end, they were briefly in the top half of the league in defensive rating.
That team wasn’t fully healthy either — Jeff Teague was out, while Tyus Jones had the best stretch of his career — but they played at their best defensively anyway.
With Butler returning from injury, some form of reintegration will likely take place, even if Friday’s game in Los Angeles suggested otherwise.
Even if their peak is attainable again at some point, Butler’s return from injury will make it tough for that peak to be hit again this season.
I think Jimmy Butler’s injury lets them off the hook a little bit of total disappointment, but considering where they were to start the year, it’s going to hurt.
This team won’t touch the 2004-05 team that missed the playoffs outright a year after a trip to the Western Conference Finals — all with the same relative group — but this team missing would be a big blow.
If there’s one thing Tom Thibodeau gets endless accolades for, it’s his ability to prepare and study in the film room.
Thibodeau has had success in the playoffs with Chicago, and while his teams were quite a bit better — and often had their runs halted due to injury, mostly Derrick Rose — they never looked out of place in the playoffs. Some of the time — mostly in the first round, granted — they looked downright dominant.
But this team has proven over the last two seasons that they’re nothing like his Bulls teams. It’s hard to say how this team will respond to the playoffs if they get there, but reputation and history suggest Thibodeau will at least put his work in.
That doesn’t mean the preparation will translate. As it’s been discussed before, some of the methods Thibodeau has deployed in his new tenure haven’t translated, especially defensively. That was the calling card for both him and his teams in Chicago.
If they finish seventh or eighth, Houston and Golden State might make his preparation moot by their sheer talent. But if they crack the top six, it will be interesting to see how the Wolves handle their first postseason in the Thibodeau era.
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