August is usually the quietest month on the NBA calendar. We’re two months removed from the Denver Nuggets prevailing over the Miami Heat for the franchise’s first-ever NBA championship, and we’re still two months out from the reigning champs beginning their title defense against the Los Angeles Lakers to open the 2023-24 NBA season.
Nobody told the Minnesota Timberwolves that they were supposed to go on vacation this August. Anthony Edwards, Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns, and others are starring for their respective national teams ahead of the FIBA Basketball World Cup. The Wolves unveiled new City Edition jerseys with a lake party. And Edwards and Naz Reid signing lucrative contracts. The Wolves have been busy again this offseason.
To make things even busier, the NBA announced the full 2023-24 schedule on Thursday. It’s not the most exciting day on the calendar. Usually, it’s a day for Timberwolves die-hards to yell about how few times the Wolves will be on national TV. However, this year’s schedule reveal seems more significant for a Wolves team that has made the playoffs the last two seasons, but still have a number of questions marks heading into this make-or-break season.
At first glance, the NBA schedule makers seem to have given the Wolves a favorable slate for the upcoming season. Minnesota will be featured on national TV 10 times this year (2 on TNT, 3 on ESPN, and 5 on NBA TV). They have a showdown with the rival Memphis Grizzlies with Ja Morant back from suspension on TNT in January, and a late season rematch with the Nuggets on ESPN in April that could very well decide playoff seeding or keep the Wolves out of the postseason entirely.
Ten national games might seem low for a team led by rising superstar Anthony Edwards, especially considering they were awarded 16 games last season after making the blockbuster trade for Rudy Gobert. But the Wolves turned in a disappointing performance last year, winning 42 games before Denver bounced them in the first round. Last year’s Timberwolves and their 23rd-ranked offense weren’t exactly a fun team to watch thanks to the wonky fit between Towns and Gobert and Towns missing 52 games with a calf injury.
The schedule Czars saw Minnesota’s hectic summer and decided to show mercy to a franchise that just made the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time since 2004. With Edwards, Gobert, KAT, Kyle Anderson, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker on international duty until September 10th at the latest, the Timberwolves caught a break with a schedule front-loaded with home games to ease into the season.
Five of Minnesota’s first seven games of the season are in the friendly confines of the Target Center, where the Timberwolves were 22-19 in front of the home fans. While the home-court advantage will be a nice way for the Wolves to get their legs under them, it didn’t exactly work to their advantage last season.
Minnesota began the 2022-23 NBA season with nine of the first 12 games at home and could only muster a lackluster 5-7 record with losses to the Jazz and two bad losses at home and away against the lowly Spurs. Last season’s false start can be chalked up at least in part to a chaotic preseason that saw KAT suddenly fall almost completely out of game shape weeks before the season while fighting off a serious infection. Rudy Gobert also wasn’t 100 percent after playing for France during the offseason.
Hopefully, tired legs this season fair better than sick and injured legs that slowed the Timberwolves down last year. Rest shouldn’t be as big of an issue this season. The Wolves have quite a big rest advantage compared to their opponents. Minnesota only has 13 back-to-backs with the first not coming until game 11 at Phoenix in mid-November. According to Canis Hoopus, the Timberwolves have a rest advantage against their opponents 23 times this season while working with a rest disadvantage just 12 times all season, with 44 games on equal footing. Those advantages could be huge for a team that was so up and down last season, often playing down to its competition.
We can sit here in August and talk about strength of schedule and rest disparity. However, none of the offseason prognosticating means anything until the Wolves actually play the games. Things can look good in the summertime, but anything can happen between now and April to derail Minnesota’s bid to make the playoffs in a third consecutive season.
The schedule makers did the Timberwolves plenty of favors. However, the Wolves can’t do what they do best and take these advantages for granted and continue to lose winnable games and come up with another disappointing season. The West might be wide open this season behind the defending champs, but the only people who will decide if the Timberwolves make a leap or crash back down to Earth are themselves.
