Kevin Durant often describes watching and playing basketball as a “spiritual” experience. Since entering the NBA in 2017, he’s been busy being one of the best, most elegant players in NBA history. He’s played alongside beautiful basketball players like Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, and Devin Booker, so it makes sense he’d describe the game like it’s poetry. But Durant clearly hasn’t tuned into a single minute of Minnesota Timberwolves basketball over the last two decades. Wolves fans have been in hell for 19 years, watching the team suck year after year. We always have Sisyphean undertaking of trying to convince ourselves that things would get better every offseason.
This offseason will be no different after the Timberwolves crashed out of the first round of the NBA playoffs for a second consecutive season after a tough 112-109 Game 5 loss to the Denver Nuggets. It’s a mediocre end to another disappointing season of Wolves basketball. But for all the injuries, fit issues, blown leads, punches thrown, and play-in championships won, the Wolves are definitively in the second-best era in franchise history.
Yes, it is pathetic that two first-round exits in a row is enough pedigree to crown this as the second-best time to be a Timberwolves fan in 34 seasons. But that’s what happens when god abandons you. The Wolves didn’t come close to the playoffs for their first seven years of existence, then rattled off eight straight playoff appearances with seven first-round exits in a row before Kevin Garnett said enough of this shit and dragged Minnesota to the Western Conference Finals. Then, the dark times. Thirteen seasons without making the playoffs. David Kahn. The Jimmy Butler experience. The 50-point quarter in the lone playoff appearance against the Houston Rockets, and the Gersson Rosas scandal.
But all that misery is a thing of the past, baby. As back-to-back play-in champions, this franchise means business. Now that the Wolves are out of their flop era and into their whatever the youth slang for “pretty good not great” era, it’s time to set the sights a little bit higher. The Timberwolves have to make it a priority to advance to the second round of the NBA playoffs next year as a bare minimum.
It might seem premature to put some kind of “success ultimatum” on a team that’s 2-11 all-time in playoff series and hasn’t won a playoff series since 2004. But the Timberwolves have a reason why they can’t rest on their laurels and fall into the same traps that plagued the franchise for three decades. That reason is Anthony Edwards. The 21-year-old from Georgia who just completed his third season in the NBA is in full-on superstar summer mode after lighting the Nuggets up for 35 points per game in Games 2 through 5 and singlehandedly keeping the Wolves competitive in those four games.
Ant’s played in 11 playoff games in his first three seasons. If he qualified for the minimum games played his 28.1 points per game in the playoffs, he would slot in just behind LeBron James for the seventh-best mark all-time. Yes, 11 games is the tiniest of sample sizes, but for context, LeBron averaged 31 points per game across his first 11 playoff games, and Kevin Durant averaged 28.4. Donovan Mitchell and Devin Booker would come in just behind Ant, and they averaged 24.4 and 29 points per game in their first 11 playoff games, respectively.
The difference? Edwards is the only player in the previous paragraph who didn’t make it out of the first round in his first two stints in the playoffs. The facilities staff at the Target Center should immediately place a Notre Dame-like “Play Like a Champion Today” sign in the Timberwolves locker room that the players have to acknowledge every time they take the court, except it says “Get Anthony Edwards to the Second Round.” Tim Connelly should put a little piece of paper in his pocket that he pulls out any time he’s thinking about a trade or contract negotiations that says “Anthony Edwards to the second round no matter what.” Every decision this franchise makes needs to be in service of getting Anthony Edwards and whoever he is playing with past the first round of the playoffs.
You may think to yourself relax, he’s only 21, there’s plenty of time to build playoff success, don’t panic. Wrong; the clock is always ticking on smaller market teams to win with their young stars. The Wolves don’t have the luxury to wait and see the same way other franchises can always look to free agency to reset the roster. This regime just has to look back in time almost 20 years to see what happens when you don’t do everything you can to maximize your star player’s window for playoff success.
Garnett spent his first 12 years in Minnesota, eight of them as the cornerstone of a playoff team. The front office recognized his potential for greatness immediately and acquired Stephon Marbury in 1996 to create one of the most dynamic duos in the league. After that plan crashed and burned within 2.5 years, Wolves brass surrounded Garnett with Terrell Brandon, Wally Szczerbiak, Joe Smith, Chauncey Billups, and Troy Hudson before going all in for one last stand with 33-year-old Latrell Sprewell and 34-year-old Sam Cassell that got the Wolves within a Sam Cassell hip injury of the NBA Finals.
As the Timberwolves look to expand the second-best era in team history into the most successful era Timberwolves fans have ever seen, it’s important to be reminded of their historic shortcomings so they don’t commit the same sins in the future. Anthony Edwards has the Wolves rolling the boulder back up the hill, but it’s up to the front office to decide if they make it to the top this time. Otherwise, the boulder will roll back to the bottom.
