Although I grew up a Timberwolves fan in the 90s, my obsession with closely following the team took hold in the late 00s when for the first time in my life I actually lived in the Twin Cities and could attend lots of games. On one such occasion in early December 2008, I was in the house for what I’ve since referred to as Wittman’s Last Stand. Facing a talented but terrible LA Clippers squad at Target Center, Randy Wittman’s club was getting trounced. What I remember most is Baron Davis sinking threes, and then the very sparse crowd of TWolves faithful starting up the chant.
“FI-RE WITT-MAN!”
It might’ve been only a dozen fans doing it, but that arena was so loosely populated and quiet that they could be heard. That Wolves team was already off to a rough start (Basketball Reference confirms the loss put them at 4 wins and 15 losses on the season) but this felt like a breaking point.
The next night, I had my company’s holiday dinner at a restaurant called Wildfire, out in Eden Prairie. Appreciative that they invited their $13-an-hour clerk to the firm party, I was cruising my dad’s old Ford Taurus station wagon on that snowy evening, approaching the restaurant and getting ready to park. I suddenly realized I better slow down and stop, lest I crash into the extremely tall gentleman crossing in front of me, heading into Wildfire himself. He paused to make sure he didn’t get hit by a station wagon, and gave a friendly wave of thanks, when he realized I wasn’t going to hurt him with my Taurus. The tall guy walked a little slow, perhaps battling arthritis in his knees from an old ball-playing days, or perhaps just a little bit down on his luck and missing any sort of skip in his step.
“I’ll be damned if that isn’t Randy Wittman.”
It sure was him. The same guy I watched get taunted by his own fans last night in Downtown Minneapolis was now right in front of me, looking by his gait like a man resigned to his fate.
Sure enough, in the next morning’s Star Tribune, Wittman was out as Wolves coach.
This story doesn’t segue neatly into a preview of the upcoming Wolves season – which is what follows – but it’s an example of the sorts of random reminders and intersections you’ll have if you obsess over this team as much as I have. Also, I recently read John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” really loved it, and needed to come up with a title for this post. I thought it worked well enough.
In any event, here are some jottings about the Wolves season that kicks off north of the border in Toronto on Wednesday night. I’m mildly optimistic on The State of the Franchise, but with some clear caveats expressed in this piece. As a brief bit of housekeeping, if anyone still visits this site, I hope to write at least monthly this year, but my hottest takes will inevitably be found during games on Twitter or X or whatever it’s called now, at @PDWolves.
Here’s to another fun Timberwolves season…
Kyle Anderson Appreciation
One year ago, the Timberwolves best player was Karl-Anthony Towns. He was coming off of a major rebound season in his career, regaining All-Star form for the first time in three years and All-NBA for the first time in four. Rudy Gobert, brand new to Minnesota, had a larger body of work as an accomplished winner. Anthony Edwards, already a media darling, had been more impressive in the competitive playoff series versus Memphis. But the team’s best all-around player, taking everything into consideration at that moment, was Towns.
That Towns would injure his leg and miss 53 games should have been more damaging to the team’s performance. The Wolves somehow went on to win over half their games and make the playoffs, largely without the contributions of their incumbent All-NBA’er.
Kyle Anderson was that “somehow.” He was the main reason that the Wolves managed to survive last season without a healthy KAT.
Anderson is a unique player. Anyone nicknamed “Slow Mo,” would seem to be. A point guard’s mentality in a power forward’s body, playing at the pace of a middle aged noon baller, Slow Mo is a very good NBA basketball player. His counting stats don’t spell out “star player,” by any means. Anderson for his career averages 7 points and 4.5 rebounds per game. But dissect the data more finely, especially last year’s with the Wolves — his first and only season in MN — and this is more than a garden variety, “replacement level” role player. In what was his second highest minutes per game of his career (28.4) Anderson averaged 9.4 points on 51 percent shooting. More importantly and impressively, from the power forward spot he nearly averaged 5 assists per game (4.9). Among the Wolves regular rotation players, Anderson had the best plus-minus numbers, with the Wolves outscoring opponents by 2.3 per 100 possessions with Anderson on the floor. Despite his slow feet, Anderson’s instincts, long arms, and quick hands make him one of the best ball thieves in franchise history. He competes with a fire that is sometimes lacking with this team since Pat Beverley left town. Aside from his outrageously “slow” shooting release that limits his ability to space the floor as an off-ball wing, Anderson checks nearly all the boxes as one of the most important winning players on this roster. Without Anderson last year, there is zero chance that they would’ve sniffed a playoff berth.
It’s just not clear that the Timberwolves organization understands or appreciates any of this.
One important caveat to the above Slow Mo praise is that Anderson needs to be slotted as a power forward for his skills to stand out in a positive way. The data tells this story and it makes clear sense. Because of that lone glaring weakness (catch and shoot floor spacing) he is not an effective “wing” in the traditional sense. He does not space the floor. Compounding that lack of shooting prowess from the wing is that having multiple large-bodied teammates on the floor with him at the same time tends to clog up the lane. Anderson’s best offensive skill is improvisational playmaking inside the arc; stuff that requires some space to work in. Playing next to either Gobert (+7.1) or Towns (+3.5) Anderson was a huge net positive in the plus-minus column. He rarely played next to both of them, and in those minutes the Wolves were outscored by 1 point. They were similarly mediocre in small samples with Anderson next to both Gobert and Naz Reid.
Why suggest that the Wolves might fail to appreciate Slow Mo’s importance?
First, the Naz Reid contract extension. Tim Connelly signed Naz to a 3-year contract worth $42 Million. With both Towns and Gobert on the team, there are no center minutes available when the team is in good health. That means that Naz was either signed to be the most expensive benchwarmer in the world, or he was signed to play power forward. In his preseason interview with Britt Robson, Chris Finch answered directly when asked where Naz finds minutes in this team’s rotation: “Well the first thing is, a lot of minutes at the 4.”
If Naz is taking the bulk of the 4 minutes, that immediately makes Anderson a less effective player. And where else is he going to find any minutes at all, with Jaden McDaniels Sharpie’d into the small forward spot for at least 32 minutes per game?
Anderson has one year left on his contract. At $9 Million in today’s NBA-salary landscape, he’s an extreme bargain. But with the Wolves opting to extend Naz Reid with hopes of transforming him from center to power forward, it’s hard to imagine Anderson getting another Wolves contract. Anything could still happen with this. Any injury to Rudy, KAT, or Naz would immediately open up a healthy slate of Kyle-at-the-4 minutes that would bring the magic right back. But the default position in which they begin suggests that Anderson will be a lot less involved in this upcoming Wolves season than he was in the last one, that he will not be a part of the team’s long or even medium-term future, and that this is probably going to be more harmful than helpful to their win/loss record.
Before wrapping this section up: Andre Iguodala retired from the NBA on Friday. Although the Golden State dynasty will always be remembered first and foremost by the Splash Brothers and Draymond, Iggy was a huge part of their championship runs, and especially their initial ascent from good team to championship team. He was their overqualified 6th Man who provided great defense, and playmaking off the dribble on offense. If he had a weakness, it was the reliability of his jumper as a floor spacing wing. (Sound like anyone you know?) He even won Finals MVP in 2015. For fun I went back to see how old Iggy was when he joined GSW, because it seemed as if his “timeline” might not have lined up perfectly with their best players Curry/Klay/Green. Iggy turned 30 in the middle of his first Warriors season. He had 9 years of NBA experience by that time. Despite that advanced NBA age, Iggy gave the Warriors 6 straight years of helpful service, winning 3 titles in that stretch. (He’d return again later, as part benchwarmer and informal Andrew Wiggins motivator, as part of their most recent title run.)
Kyle had 8 years of experience before joining the Wolves, and just turned 30 last month. Even if the Wolves foundation is built around Ant, Jaden, and the Twin Towers, is there some reason that they shouldn’t value Slow Mo much the same way Golden State valued Iggy? Is there some reason he can’t play another four or five years here, as the unequivocal 6th Man and secondary playmaker?
Maybe these are moot points after the Naz extension, but since Kyle’s still here it’s fair to discuss how good he’s been here, how integral he was to the success that last year’s team had, and how big of a mistake it might be to fail to appreciate any of that.
An Elite Defense
Can this Timberwolves roster compete for a championship?
If the answer is yes, then it has to be based in large part on them having the best defense in the league. There is reason for hope.
The roster has elite defensive players: Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels in the starting linuep, and Nickeil-Alexander-Walker off the bench. Anthony Edwards is a gifted on-ball defender who takes pride in shutting down go-to guys. Kyle Anderson defends well, with some tenacity. Mike Conley is a total pro, and that extends to how he approaches everything on D.
Rudy is the obvious centerpiece to this, no pun intended. He was the league’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2018, 2019, and 2021. In 2022, he merely made All-Defensive First Team. With the Jazz, Rudy was practically a one-man elite defense, and that is precisely why he’s paid so much money, and why Tim Connelly paid so many first round picks to get him.
Those first round picks are a chief reason that narratives around Rudy have spun negative. The Wolves underperformed in Rudy’s first season (at least if you remove the Towns Injury excuse) and there was a stretch of games early in the season when even the defense with Rudy seemed subpar. When Rudy’s name gets brought up, it’s usually with a negative connotation. He was recently ranked by ESPN as the league’s 64th best player. The Ringer ranked him 66th. This is a guy who was an All-Star and All-Defense First Team just one season earlier, and suffered no significant injuries or noticeable decline.
Despite the negative messaging and some early struggles to adapt to new surroundings, Rudy’s defense did have a clear impact. Over 70 games and 2,148 minutes, he had a defensive rating of 110.3 points allowed per 100 possessions. Leaguewide, only the Cavs had a lower number than that (109.9). In other words, whenever Rudy was on the floor, the Wolves defended at an elite level. Since when has any sentence that included “Wolves” + “defended” + “elite” been possible without a great deal of sarcastic inflection?
The last part of this Possibly Elite Defense discussion is the most interesting one:
Karl-Anthony Towns.
While Rudy’s d-rating was great last season, it was not the best on the team. Albeit in far fewer minutes (957), KAT actually led the regular rotation players in that category, at 109.4. While that alone is noteworthy, what’s even wilder (at least relative to last year’s preseason expectation that he’d struggle to defend as a 4 man, forced to close out on perimeter shooters) is that the Rudy & KAT Twin Towers duo had a truly insane d-rating of 105.6. Over a 529-minute sampling, which by virtue of Finch’s rotation means it routinely faced opposing starting units, the Twin Towers were defensively dominant. (Their problem, which was significant and will be discussed below, was on offense.)
As much as some of us have soured on parts of KAT’s game, and especially his public persona, it’s impossible to forget how exciting it was when he first came to Minnesota. He was a number one pick that had a little more hype than number one picks normally have — it was felt to be a “good” year to win the lottery, and the Wolves finally won it. In the annual GM survey, they twice consecutively voted KAT as the player they’d most like to build a team around. (Seriously, think about who those players are now, and think about how great that type of type of player has to be.) I often repeat it because it speaks to the consensus conception of Towns that was held when he entered the league. A huuuuge part of the initial hype was based on defense. And much of KAT’s body of work on that side of the floor was next to a huge center. Whatever the x’s and o’s of Calipari’s Wildcats or Sam Mitchell’s 2015-16 Timberwolves, Towns + another huge and capable center =’d Elite Defense.
That is not to say that scouts projected him as a long-term 4 man. He was always supposed to be a center. But maybe that isn’t his destiny on a great team, and maybe there is something to last year’s defensive data.
A playoff series I’ll never forget was the 2016 West Finals between the Thunder and Warriors; the one where Golden State came back from down 3-1 to beat Durant, and effectively convinced Durant to join them the next season after the Warriors lost their own 3-1 lead to LeBron in the Finals. That was the 72-win Warriors operation, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson at their peak powers. What stood out when OKC was outplaying them — and they were outplaying them — was all of the size they could throw out there to disrupt them on the perimeter. Between Durant, Serge Ibaka, and Steven Adams, they had too much length for GSW to function like they normally would. All of those arms interfering with shots and passes. When I think about what a best-case scenario for this iteration of the Wolves might look like, it starts with defense, and leveraging all of that length between the Twin Towers and Jaden McDaniels. That’s the ticket to title contention this year, if one exists.
A House Divided? Compartmentalizing the Short & Long Term
“There is a financial wrecking ball coming. It is coming as far as where they are with finances. You have three guys on super max [contracts]. Edwards, Gobert, Towns. The Conley situation is going to be ‘unrestricted free agent’ — you have no point guard next year. You’re going to be in the luxury tax on a big McDaniels number, here. You’re gonna be in it now, and you’re gonna be in it next year, unless you figure out your finances.”
–Bobby Marks, discussing a possible Jaden McDaniels contract extension (shortly before his extension was reached), on The Lowe Post Podcast.
As Wolves fans we’re a little bit too conditioned to think more about the future and what might be, than the present and what is. In some ways the entire NBA media and its fans share that problem. But with this Wolves team, there is now no doubt about one thing:
Unless they make a major trade and unless they do it soon, they are going to have an extremely expensive roster going forward.
Between just Ant, Jaden, KAT, Rudy, and Naz, they will have enough committed salary for the 2024-25 season to be right around the luxury tax line. The combined salaries of their other 10 players will determine the extent by which they cross it. If the Wolves were coming off of a championship run, or something close to it, this would be less controversial. It would be chalked up to “going all in” while they have the realistic chance to collect rings. Instead, they are coming off of a 42-40 season in which they were disposed of in 5 games in the first round of the playoffs. While they do have remaining untapped potential, they also have a starting point guard in the twilight of his career, and a pair of centers trying to fit together who will soon make almost $100 Million combined between them, and each is either at, or slightly beyond his peak powers as an NBA star player. The Wolves are positioned to spend money like an elite team, and their past performance casts doubt that they can perform like one.
The (seemingly) unsustainable financials being what they are, there are three ways to unpack what is something of a duality within the current Timberwolves Identity: (1) The Ant & Jaden Core that could still be; (2) Chris Finch: Strengths & Weaknesses; and (3) What if it suddenly snaps together?
Let’s take them one at a time:
- Ant & Jaden
The financial discussion contemplates trading away a core player. Probably Towns, possibly Rudy, but for sure a core player. That carries a negative connotation. It’s a star player’s league and teams rarely improve by any transaction that nets out negatively in the star-player column. In the case of these Wolves, the clear disappointment in a Towns or even Gobert trade would be the likely prerequisite for such a move. If the Wolves trade KAT this year or next summer, it will probably be due to disappointing results in the 2023-24 season. It’s hard to imagine the team winning 54 games and reaching the conference finals, only to turn around and trade their franchise player of the past 9 years. But if they go something like 43-39, and again fizzle out in the first round, you can be sure they will do anything possible to avoid paying Twin Towers an almost nine-figure annual salary for a third-year reunion tour.
But even factoring in the short-term disappointment that would likely accompany a Towns or Gobert deal, all is far from lost for the franchise’s hopes going forward. The reason for that is pretty simple: they’ve got Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels on their roster, and each is now under contract for this coming season and five more after that. That might be a core, in and of itself.
Ant improved somewhat significantly from Year 1 to 2, and again from Year 2 to 3. His per-game points, assists, rebounds, and steals each improved over his first three seasons. So did his field goal percentage and three-point percentage. His defense, especially on the ball against top-notch scorers, has gotten to be quite good. Last year he made his first All-Star Team at age 21. Over the summer, he was the featured man on Team USA, and garnered Dwyane Wade comps from Dwyane Wade’s former coach. He’s got things to work on yet, to be sure — shot selection, playmaking for teammates (especially lob passes), off-ball defense, and especially drawing fouls — but for a shooting guard with his physique, athleticism, and attitude, the trajectory we’re seeing leaves Ant a year or three away from being a top-flight star.
Jaden’s future seems more uncertain than Ant’s, but that isn’t owing to a flatter improvement curve. It’s mostly because he’s had a much smaller role in the Wolves’ halfcourt offense, so we have fuzzier idea of what he might do as an age 25 or age 26 scorer. But you don’t start the Jaden Discussion with scoring, or offense. It begins on the other end of the floor, where he might become the best perimeter defender in basketball, very soon. When Jaden got what seemed like premature Actual NBA Minutes, as a 20-year old rookie on what soon became a rather miserable Wolves team, three things immediately stood out: (1) This guy tries to dunk everything; (2) Despite the poker face, this guy seems to get pissed off sometimes, possibly in a good way; and (3) Look at those feet move. The first two were interesting and maybe even intriguing — you had someone with a 6’9″ frame who seemed to both give a shit (sometimes to a fault) and show tons of ambition with the ball in his hands. That’s an exciting starting point, even if it’s raw. But #3 up there was the big story. Jaden, from the jump as a pro, could close out on the game’s best perimeter players, force them to go off the dribble, and then cut off their dribble. Oh, and he was so long that he didn’t have to get all the way into their space to heavily contest their shot. He looked like a potential star on defense. That’s held true ever since, and he’s getting more and more recognition from national pundits for his D. He didn’t make last year’s All-Defense Team, but he’ll make plenty of them in the future.
As a championship-level Core Duo — if they really are to become a version of Jordan & Pippen (Hey, Finch is the one who made the Jaden-Pippen comp, and Ant deserves only the best comps) then Jaden’s offense will need to expand. In the “What if we trade KAT away?” contingency, that figures to happen organically. His per-game scoring has bumped from 6.8 to 9.2 to 12.1, in three seasons. Pippen’s went from 7.9 to 14.4 to 16.5. But he started his career at 22, whereas Jaden was a 20-year old 1 & Done rookie. McDaniels has a nice touch on his mid-range dribble jumper; a shot that often bails his team out of a dwindling shot clock. His three-point shot is progressing – last year he converted 40 percent of them. He’s not yet much of an iso scorer, but on Ant’s team that hardly seems like a top priority.
Maybe I grew up playing too much NBA Jam, but there’s something comforting about knowing who your team’s best two guys are, and feeling pretty good about it. If Ant and Jaden are this good at 22 (what Ant turned in August) and 23 (what Jaden turned a few weeks ago) it’s not crazy to think they’ll both be All-Stars in 3 years, when each still has multiple years to go on their current Wolves contracts. That’s a lot to feel good about, even if this upcoming season were to become kind of a flop.
- Chris Finch
Watching last year’s Wolves team not run an offense a trying experience. The team needed direction. It needed structure. It needed some role definition.
It wasn’t getting any of that from the bench, and it was only when Kyle Anderson took playmaking upon himself, and at times after Mike Conley subbed in for D’Angelo Russell at the point, that there were a semblance of cohesion. The offense was especially terrible when both Towns and Gobert — you know, the two highest paid and most accomplished players on the team — shared the floor. With Twin Towers (a concept Finch has steadfastly supported and continues to support) on the floor the Wolves scored 106.2 points per 100 possessions. That was more than 2 points per 100 worse than last year’s 30th ranked NBA offense (Hornets). Crappy team offense performance is not any sort of trend for either Towns or Gobert. Whatever the scheme was that Finch cooked up, it wasn’t working. If there is an intention to ride out the dual-big concept for years going forward, that has to be straightened out, with or without Chris Finch.
And yet there’s a whole ‘nother way to view Finch’s job performance. It’s in the paragraphs above about Ant and Jaden. Finch has their respect and whatever he’s saying to them, it’s generating progress. As someone who always defended Scott Brooks from common tactical criticisms as OKC Thunder coach (because under his watch they developed three league MVPs and built a contender through the draft) I am likewise impressed by how Finch is developing his young talent.
Finch says this stuff about Ant (from the Robson interview):
What is important for him – and this is where I kind of worried the most – is that in the last two years, he has jumped exponentially in his professional development habits. I have long said this about Ant: He doesn’t have bad habits, he has no habits. So learning a schedule – he was always willing to do the work but maybe the purpose and intent behind it all wasn’t there as much. He is slowly starting to take care of his body better. Slowly starting to eat better. Slowly starting to understand the transference of work to the floor. And now he just has to keep maintaining that.
When I talk to him and watch him and work with him, I see it, you know? As we go through this change, he has to understand that that’s what’s creating this and that is what is going to allow him to continue to build upon that. He is the perfect amount of confidence and coach-ability.
For his part, Ant says this stuff about Finch:
As long as Finch has this bond with Ant, and as long as it leads to clear progress with Ant and his younger teammates (we could add Naz Reid and possibly Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Luka Garza to the list) then the coach’s seat will stay cool. Developing talent from within will trump x’s and o’s for a good long while yet.
- What if it all comes together?
Way too many words ago, I wrote about how the Wolves could have an elite defense and how — if they do have an elite defense — they could contend for a championship. It should go without saying that any hopes of title contention will also require they have at least a “pretty good” offense, too. Last year’s Twin Towers experiment left a whole lot to be desired from an x’s and o’s and chemistry standpoint, and I am not feeling very optimistic about it working out much better this year, after what I saw last year.
But what if it is a whole lot better?
This Twitter exchange made me rethink this at least a little bit, reducing what was developing to be a hard certainty that Connelly would have no choice but to move off of Towns or Gobert before next season, or else put Glen Taylor and his successors into financial hell. Some teams do pay the luxury tax, and in fact they pay a great deal of it. According to Mark Deeks writing for Forbes in July 2022, the Warriors had paid over $337,000,000 in tax bills over a span of just 5 seasons. (Retaining a dynasty core while moving into a new San Francisco arena came at a steep cost.) The Wolves don’t have Bay Area or Steph Curry revenue streams, but everything about the Marc Lore ownership situation has seemed to be aggressive. Signing Tim Connelly for way more than Denver would agree to pay him, followed by the Rudy trade itself, hardly smells like a person ready to shy away from some tax bills that other league owners are paying, especially if the Wolves are in fact playing like a potential champion.
But there are some costs for heavy NBA spenders that extend beyond the owner’s checkbook. The new CBA has a “second apron” (approximately $17.5 Million over the luxury tax line; a place the Wolves easily project to be with their status quo roster situation) that, if crossed, can take away their mid-level exception, can freeze their ability to trade certain first round picks, and — if they repeat as “2nd Apron” exceeders, can even bump a future first round pick all the way to the end of the round.
Taken together, wild spending way above the luxury tax line will come at severe costs to any team, and it seems unlikely the Timberwolves will put themselves into that spot if they do not have a great team.
This duality theme makes for a fun season ahead. In the short term, there is a great deal at stake. The Wolves could realistically perform like one of the league’s very best teams, anchored by elite defense and improved offensive strategy, as well as Ant’s continued ascent into the upper echelon of star scorers. Or, if that doesn’t happen, the Wolves could and probably will begin to aggressively explore trade packages for at least one of their Twin Towers. It could be KAT. It could be Rudy. It could even be both. And even if the latter scenario is what transpires, fans can take solace in the Ant & Jaden Silver Lining, knowing that those two are still years away from their primes and the returns of any Towns or Gobert trade would help rebuild and supplement the roster in ways that hopefully make greater sense for what they need around them when they reach their peak as a duo.
Since I’ve already written way too much here, and I don’t write frequently anymore, here are a few quick-hitter season predictions of mine, as the 2023-24 campaign kicks off less than 24 hours from when I wrap this up:
- Rudy Gobert will return to the league’s All-Defense Team.
- Jaden McDaniels will join him.
- The Wolves will have a Top-5 defense in the NBA.
- The Wolves will not have a Top-15 offense in the NBA.
- Kyle Anderson will struggle playing the 3 position, and his frustration will be evident until it gets sorted out.
- In however many minutes he gets, Luka Garza will have a positive plus-minus and the team’s highest PER.
- Nickeil Alexander-Walker will airball at least 2 free throws.
- Nickeil Alexander-Walker will hold his cousin Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to some of his least efficient scoring nights.
- This will not be Mike Conley’s final season as a Timberwolf.
- Anthony Edwards will make the All-Star Team (and not as an injury replacement, this time).
- Anthony Edwards will not yet make an All-NBA Team.
- The Wolves will win 45 games, finishing the season stronger than they started it.
- Karl-Anthony Towns will be traded before the deadline.
- The Wolves will advance to the 2nd Round of the playoffs.
It all starts up again on Wednesday night.
Go Wolves.