After taking the right steps in moving on from the Kevin Love era, Minnesota has begun putting together a talented roster. How do they continue their momentum and turn their young team into a championship contender?
Imagine you are putting together a puzzle. How hard is that puzzle to put together? How long will it take? Will you ever successfully get every piece into place?
Obviously those questions are impossible to answer without more information. The number of pieces, the difficulty of the picture, whether you even have a picture to reference. Our children take wooden animal shapes and fit them into pre-cut spaces on a board, while our grandparents spend countless hours hunting for where each white-and-brown piece fits on a 5,000 piece puzzle of a winter forest. Puzzles have a vast array of difficulty, but ultimately they all should reach the same point; a fully completed picture, with each piece in its place.
And ultimately, each NBA team wants to reach the same point: a fully completed team, with each “piece” in its place, coming together to win a championship and hoist the Larry O’Brian trophy.
But just like puzzles, the path to those championships have varying levels of difficulty. A team like Philadelphia has a pile of pieces and they’re sorting out edges from interior pieces, with nothing yet put together. Oklahoma City has a beautiful puzzle mostly complete, but mom’s yelling from the kitchen that you better have that puzzle off of her table before dinner is ready — in other words, they don’t have much time. Golden State finished their puzzle and decided they had so much fun putting it together that they should do another. Pop is sitting in his study with a glass of wine admiring the framed puzzles on every wall.
Brooklyn has a 2,000 piece puzzle, they lost the picture to go off of, and they have taped oven mitts over their hands.
For teams near the bottom of the standings, their puzzles are often in disarray. However, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ stands out from the rest. Yes, they are 16-36 (8-28 since starting 8-8) and sporting the fifth worst record in the league, but Minnesota’s puzzle looks to be only 100 pieces, and the border is already put together. Before too long this team may be on the opposite end of the rankings, eliminating the Clippers in the second round (Clips gonna Clip) and placing their names in the championship discussion.
How Things Stand
Two years ago, Minnesota missed the playoffs after finishing just under .500, yet another season derailed by injuries and poor performance in close games. Their star, Kevin Love, was making it clear he did not plan to stay in Minnesota once his contract was up, and his supposed co-star, Ricky Rubio, didn’t even crack ten points a game. Recent lottery picks Johnny Flynn and Derrick Williams were busts, and their top rookie, Shabazz Muhammad, was barely on the court and terrible when he was. The team had failed to reload after Kevin Garnett’s departure to Boston, and the future looked dim.
If I had written this series back then, I may have said something like this: “Kevin Love has made it clear he isn’t sticking around, so Minnesota needs to get as much as they can for him. The team as currently constructed has little to no young talent; they need to restock the cupboard. He’s a bona fide star – don’t take the first trade on the table. Hold out for the king’s ransom. If you don’t get what you want, you can wait until February. Look to trade or cut ties with other veterans and approach 2014-15 as an opportunity to see what you have in young players and acquire a high draft pick to add real talent. Take it slow, develop a team of talented players, and put together a contender with long-term sustainability.” Well apparently Flip Saunders read the piece I never wrote.
Trading Love for Andrew Wiggins put a legitimately talented player back on the Timberwolves’ team, and bottoming out brought a roster filled with young talent – first overall pick Karl Anthony-Towns, guards Zach LaVine and Tyus Jones, and international wings Damjan Rudez and Nemanja Bjelica. They balanced the roster with veteran players to provide leadership and guidance, including trading for Timberwolves great Garnett to mentor young Towns. This year Minnesota is positioned for another top-5 pick as Towns and Wiggins show flashes of a dominant pairing coming soon.
Steps to Take
#1: Figure out who will be on this team when it gets good – It’s obvious that Karl-Anthony Towns will be the pivot man in Minnesota for at least the next eight or nine years, and there is no reason Wiggins won’t flank him on the wing. But with the influx of talent come decisions to be made about what pieces fit where, and what needs the Wolves still need to address.
Shabazz Muhammad has grown since his impotent rookie year, but his defense is still inconsistent and he’s not a picture of efficiency – does Minnesota want to keep him as part of their core? What about Gorgei Dieng, the lanky center who has proven to be a steal as a later pick. But can he be a solid rotation big on a championship team?
The biggest question to be answered is concerning Ricky Rubio. The Spanish guard is a master ball-handler, a passing maestro, and collects steals like others collect stamps. But he has struggled to develop a jump shot, and his injury history is checkered at best. The Wolves need to decide if they want to build around Rubio at the point, or look elsewhere.
#2: Play Zach LaVine at the two – One person who has cemented himself into the core of this team has been LaVine, who has shown he is more than just an elite dunker. LaVine is shooting and scoring at a higher rate than last year, dropping nine games of 20 or more points. However, coach Sam Mitchell has put LaVine at the point for the bulk of his minutes, playing him off the bench as Rubio’s replacement while starting Tayshaun Prince. When LaVine plays the point the Timberwolves are outscored by 7.3 points per 36 minutes; when he plays at the two alongside Rubio, the 16-36 Timberwolves are actually outscoring their opponents by almost a point per 36 minutes. That lineup also allows Andrew Wiggins to shift to the three, where many analysts think he will be best placed long-term.
#3: Decrease the playing time of the veterans – I completely respect Minnesota’s plan of bringing seasoned veterans on board to help mentor the younger players, and I think the benefits have been seen in the early success of Towns. However, it’s hard for the Timberwolves to evaluate their young players, and allow them to grow, when Kevin Martin and Tayshaun Prince are eating up valuable minutes. I would even advocate sitting completely the older players for a few games; Mitchell could trot out a starting lineup of Rubio, LaVine, Wiggins, Bjelica, and Towns, with Jones, Shabazz, Payne, and Dieng coming off the bench. See how the young guns do on their own.
#4: Draft the best player available in June; don’t seek to fill a certain position – Every year teams balance the talent of the incoming players versus the needs of their teams. Minnesota may trick itself into finding a clear “position” to draft for – perhaps they go after their power forward of the future, or another spot they identify. But with a team this young, and star talent so versatile, the Timberwolves need to grab the best player available and sort out the fit down the road.
#5: Let Sam Mitchell go at the end of the year and hire a top-notch coach to oversee the growth of these stars – Mitchell has stepped in under sobering circumstances, and should be lauded for that, but he does not appear to be the man for the job of molding this group of talent into a contender. His schemes are “old school” to the point of being archaic, and he has struggled to manage rotations. The Minnesota job is one of the best in the league with the upside brimming in this roster, and they can use that to attract the best available coaches. The exact person to hire is up to Minnesota’s management team, but they can probably be grouped into a few general categories:
- Big Names with the Track Record of Developing Stars: This includes Scott Brooks, who oversaw a situation with many distinct parallels in Oklahoma City, and Tom Thibodeau, who watched over Rose and Butler as they became stars.
- New Guys to Grow with the Team: The top candidate here is Luke Walton, a hot name after his success with the Warriors, and his apprenticeship under Steve Kerr could appeal to the value system of Minnesota management. Jay Larranaga, Sean Miller, and Ime Udoka are also on this list, as are any retiring players that could be interested in jumping into a coaching role.
- Win Totals, but Issues: David Blatt and Jeff Hornacek have recently been fired despite solid records, and while both have promise and certainly a future in the league, they both have severe warts that should discourage Minnesota (Blatt with his demeanor and the chip on his shoulder, and Hornacek with managing personalities on a team). Mark Jackson surely had a role in Steph Curry and Klay Thompson blossoming into stars, but he also fought shadow wars with management and fired the White Mamba – both no-gos.
- Veteran Coaches: Guys like Jeff Van Gundy, Kevin McHale, and potentially George Karl could be looking to coach next season, but their success has largely come at the head of veteran teams, and may not be the right picks for such a young and growing squad
- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA: Byron Scott
Conclusion
There may not be a lottery team in as good a spot as Minnesota. Karl-Anthony Towns looks like a future MVP contender, Andrew Wiggins will make multiple All Stars, and the rest of the roster is brimming with young talent. While this year the wins may not be frequent, there’s every reason to expect them down the road. And while that road may be a little longer than fans like, they have to recognize there are much worse places to be. To return to our earlier metaphor, a team like the Phoenix Suns is a long way from a complete puzzle. They had half of the puzzle together, and then pieces started pushing away from each other and the Suns proceeded to destroy all of their progress and now sit on the floor surrounded by small bits of cardboard. Minnesota? They have the pieces and the picture is coming together. With a little patience and a little care, this roster could turn into a true contender.
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