Allow me, if you will, to set the table so that I may begin to dig into the Minnesota Timberwolves. I’ve been hungry to get my thoughts out into the ether, but something about this recipe just isn’t right. This Timberwolves dish doesn’t taste like it used to. Anthony Edwards has blossomed into the star we all hoped he’d be. Jaden McDaniels is rounding into All-Defensive team form. Most importantly, the Wolves are winning. The team has gone 15-9 since January 2. Yet, I’m often left uninspired by Wolves basketball.
Mike Conley has joined the team as the result of the trade that sent D’Angelo Russell to the Los Angeles Lakers. That move was the latest in a series of never-ending roster-churning changes that this franchise has made. Over the past 20 years of Timberwolves basketball, we’ve seen so many players shuffled in and out of the roster — a mistake that, for a large swath of two decades, didn’t actually matter.
The stakes have been so low for the Wolves for so long that the constant turnover felt less like rapidly shifting tides and more like the dull and subtle rocking of a boat on the ocean. The constant inconsistency became a quiet hum, a noise machine in the otherwise silent, pitch-black night that fans could fall asleep to. That was back when the team was wading in the waters of irrelevancy. Now, there are stakes, and it seems the franchise, even under new ownership and with new management, is carrying on a lineage that is charting the path back out into the endless sea of mediocrity.
I won’t be quibbling about whether bringing Gobert into the fold was a good idea. We haven’t seen a large enough sample size of Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Rudy Gobert to pass fair judgment about whether it will work. In all honesty, I still think the trio, with the right pieces around them, has the potential to be very good. I’m also not particularly interested in rehashing the value that the Wolves gave up in the Gobert deal; that’s been done. I’m really focused on the fact that, no matter what you think of Gobert as a player, the fit, or the trade, the asset equity the Wolves gave up means that it is essential that Tim Connelly make this work.
The trade for Conley is more evidence that Tim Connelly seems less focused on the future outcomes of the Timberwolves and more focused on making Gobert fit. I’m not going to pretend that Russell was the perfect fit next to Edwards, nor do I think it’s all that realistic to think about him as the long-term fixture at point guard for this team. But DLo and Ant were really starting to find a groove together. The Wolves were playing at a 13-7 clip in the new year with Russell and Edwards leading the way. For all the hullabaloo about their fit, Russell seemed, at least outwardly, more than happy to cede primary playmaking responsibilities.
But the relationship between Russell and Gobert wasn’t working. It was reported after the trade that Russell’s relationship with Gobert was frayed. In most circumstances, one might assume Russell would have more organizational equity than Gobert. Russell was a huge contributor to a Wolves team that made the playoffs last season. Not to mention that his strong relationship with the franchise cornerstone brought him to the team in the first place.
After last season, there seemed to be an acknowledgment by team officials that things had gone about as well as they possibly could have as The Athletic’s Jon Krawcynzki wrote this offseason.
They looked around at the rest of the Western Conference and knew they were not good enough. Last season’s team was young and fun and exciting, and the revival of Minnesota as a basketball market was rewarding. But the overwhelming feeling internally was that if they didn’t make some significant maneuvers, a team that had squeezed every ounce of success possible out of its roster was destined to hit a wall in a conference that is only getting tougher and deeper.
Maybe that was the right perspective to take at the time. The Western Conference was looking impenetrable before the season. But, and this is a big but, the organization didn’t seem to account for Edwards’ growth. It seems like a major strategic error not to bet on the internal improvement of the 21-year-old who just averaged 25 points per game on efficient shooting numbers in his first-ever playoff series. I think it would have made a lot of sense to think, Hm, we’ve got ourselves a young core to build around this burgeoning superstar. Let’s see where he can take us.
Instead, the timeline has shifted and the Timberwolves are implored to maximize the Gobert window rather than the Anthony FREAKING Edwards window. Minnesota has to get better in a hurry to maximize their time with Gobert. Mike Conley should help that in the immediate, as he’s already got chemistry with Rudy. But what’s next for the Wolves? They’ve exhausted most of their means of improvement. They’ve traded away many of their young players and when Edwards and McDaniels sign their inevitable extensions, this team is going to be capital-E Expensive.
How will Tim Connelly course correct? A lot of that depends on how the Wolves look the rest of the season. Karl-Anthony Towns’ return is still looming, and his reintegration into the lineup could spell a huge difference for this team. But Towns will be returning to a more disparate Timberewolves team than the one he left. If Minnesota can make a late-season run, maybe all of this won’t matter. Perhaps leaning into the Rudy Gobert Wolves is the right thing to do. Right now, though, it all feels very tenuous.
