We’re in the dog days of the NBA offseason when 99 percent of the juicy free agency drama has settled down, and all we’re waiting for is Damian Lillard‘s slow inevitable heat death. Anthony Edwards’ takeover of the world at the FIBA World Cup is still a month away. The Minnesota Timberwolves haven’t played a game since April’s first-round exit at the Denver Nuggets’ hands. And training camp doesn’t begin until early October. Wolves sickos are hungry for any morsels of news they can get their little Twitter fingers on, and they may have just gotten a feast that will tide them over from none other than playoff foe Bruce Brown.
Speaking on the Run Your Race podcast, the former Nuggets guard who signed with the Indiana Pacers this offseason dropped a quote that’s music to Wolves fans’ ears. He tried to stay politically correct by saying the Phoenix Suns were technically their toughest series on their way to the NBA Championship. However, he dropped the facade and declared the Timberwolves their toughest opponent in the playoffs.
It’s an interesting thought exercise from the mouth of one of the guys who absolutely shredded the Timberwolves for five games in the first round. The Wolves were also down two of their seven best players in the Nuggets series. Naz Reid had broken his wrist attempting to dunk on some fools while Jaden McDaniels broke his hand punching a wall during the final game of the regular season. They also lost Kyle Anderson for Game 5. Therefore, to say the 8th-seeded Wolves played them the hardest while missing several key players says a lot about the young squad. It also begs this question heading into the 2023-24 season:
Are the Minnesota Timberwolves quietly contenders?
The general consensus to that question is probably somewhere between hell no and are you a complete moron for even suggesting it? Last year, the dysfunctional Wolves stumbled their way to 42 wins after the Rudy Gobert trade was supposed to catapult them into the conversation. But he and fellow tall boy Karl-Anthony Towns never fully gelled. Towns also went down with a calf injury for 52 games, and the Wolves kept losing games in which they had a 10-point lead. It was a disappointing season despite Edwards breaking through to make his first all-star team and signing a rookie max extension, and McDaniels becoming an all-world defender in their respective third seasons.
However the Wolves have a fully healthy roster for the first time in the Tim Connelly era. They will play in a wild Western Conference that seems completely up for grabs behind the reigning champs. And they have two young forwards who lit the Las Vegas Summer League on fire, Josh Minott and Leonard Miller. Therefore, the Wolves have the talent and the opening to make some noise next season. The rotation of Edwards, Towns, Gobert, McDaniels, Anderson, Mike Conley, and Reid is as talented as any other rotation in the NBA. With a few shrewd signings in free agency, the Wolves bench could see a marked improvement from the inconsistent group last season.
The starting lineup of Conley, Edwards, McDaniels, Towns, and Gobert may not have been a lineup of death in their limited time together last season. However, they posted a plus-6.4 net rating in their 75 minutes on the court at the end of the regular season. That would be second in the league across the entire season last year! Again, it’s a tiny sample size, but it’s a step in the right direction for a team that went all-in last season.
We are living through the new media revolution where players are taking control of their own narratives for better and worse. They have more avenues to say what’s in their hearts — or what’s going to get their podcast some clout. Outside of actual news, the offseason news cycle is filled with current players saying more and more outlandish things on their buddy’s podcasts. (Towns running wild on the Pat Bev Podcast being patient zero).
But consider where this little nugget about the Timberwolves is coming from. Bruce Brown isn’t the kind of player to mince his words. The former second-round pick made a name for himself as a hardworking role player in Detroit and Brooklyn before catching on with the Nuggets. He’s a do-everything combo guard-forward who did his part in kicking the hell out of the Wolves in Round 1. If he says the Wolves were their toughest opponent, I believe him, even if that means he’s taking them over Jimmy Butler and the Heat, LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, and Devin Booker and Kevin Durant and the Suns.
Just because one player says they were a tough out doesn’t actually make the Timberwolves any good. More often than not, all hyping up the Timberwolves does is inflate their ego and lead to a massive letdown. Minnesota can’t let any kind of praise like this get to their heads if they want to make the leap many thought they were going to make last year.
