This will take time. The Timberwolves are obviously talented, but the truth is that they’re in a developmental stage, and it’s going to be a longer and more painful process than many optimists before the season believed.
The Timberwolves aren’t the 2009-10 Thunder, and that’s fine
Oklahoma City was the exception to the rule. The Timberwolves shouldn’t be punished for not following the Thunder’s path.
Photo by J Pat Carter/Getty Images
In their first ever Christmas game, they were blown out by the Oklahoma City Thunder, 112-100. The Wolves came out the gate swinging, but a slacking offense, childish turnovers, and defensive errors caused the game to get out of hand quickly. Tom Thibodeau, never one to limit his players’ court time, sat his starters with four minutes left because was no chance of coming back.
The loss two nights before was just as embarrassing. The Wolves led by seven points going into the fourth quarter at home against the Kings, then bled 31 points in 12 minutes to lose. Karl-Anthony Towns missed not one, but two wide-open threes that would have given Minnesota the lead in the final minute.
These two disastrous games came after a four-game stretch where the struggling Wolves looked to be realizing their collective talent. Now, they’re back to square one. But is that so bad?
Sunday’s opponent offered an obvious point of comparison for this Timberwolves team.
Remember the Thunder group of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden? Like Minnesota, that core provided a treasure trove of talent featuring one clear superstar and two others threatening to become so.
Minnesota’s three, stat-wise, are proving that their talent lives up to the relation. Towns, Andrew Wiggins, and Zach LaVine are the first trio of players 21 and under to average more than 20 points per game.
But the comparison falls apart once team success is measured. In the third season of the Thunder’s rebuild, they won 50 games, more than double their total from the year before. They also took the Lakers to six games in the first round of the playoffs.
The Wolves, in their third year after acquiring Wiggins, with two former Rookies of the Year in Wiggins and Towns and a former Coach of the Year in charge, are en route to match their 29-win total of the previous year. They have the talent, but it’s not translating to tangible results.
There are warts there. Towns is great, but he’s still struggling with defensive schemes and often finds himself rotating too slowly or over-rotating. Wiggins hasn’t taken the big leap into superstar that everyone desperately wants, and is he even better than LaVine at this point? As it was in the Thunder game, it’s been difficult for all three players to get going at the same time. That’s not to say that the old Thunder were perfect in any way, but they managed to mesh their talents together in a way the Wolves cannot.
But that comparison does a disservice to the Wolves.
That Thunder team drafted Durant before moving to OKC, and he was their bona-fide superstar and future at that stage. Durant was the foundation, and the others (Westbrook, Harden, Serge Ibaka) were pieces to complement him.
The Wolves landed Wiggins first, but for all his talent and hype, he is not their Durant. That’s Towns, but he came a year later. Wiggins looks more like a Jimmy Butler in training at best, hair and all. LaVine occupies Westbrook’s spot in this comparison, but he’s still trying to figure out who he is. The again, it took Westbrook some time to come into his own as well.
The Timberwolves also don’t have the Thunder’s management stability. Flip Saunders, the architect of the Wolves’ rebuild, tragically passed away last year, which took both an emotional and developmental toll on the team. He was the one who forced LaVine’s progress by letting him run the offense as a point guard. By contrast, the Thunder had a steady coach in Scott Brooks and Sam Presti as the GM.
The Timberwolves are young even by young team standards.
Kris Dunn, their rookie and another talented player who is struggling to live up to expectations, is 22. He’s older than the veterans that usually should be guiding him.
The Thunder team was also young, but that’s damning the Wolves with the exception rather than accepting the rule. No star is as capable and self-actualized as Durant was at that age. No team can be expected to have a run on draft picks like Westbrook, Harden, and Ibaka. That Thunder team was a one of a kind.
As much as we want them to be, the Wolves aren’t the Thunder. Their progress is not as straightforward. It is jagged. It stops and starts. Some days, like the Christmas disappointment, it seems like no progress is being made at all. That’s what happens when you have the youngest team in the league. That’s what happens when your franchise is depending on kids.
And there’s nothing wrong with that
Let’s all relax. Limiting Wiggins’ potential already because he hasn’t become a superstar at 21 is absurd. There is still a lot of time for him. The same goes for LaVine and Dunn. Towns is ahead of the curve, but even he needs time to grow.
This plan may end in futility like so many others that the Wolves have tried, but it is far too early to be so morbid about it. It is frustrating to watch them lose games that they should win, and it is even more so to watch them make silly mistakes to give up the game in the second half. There was an expectation that Thibodeau could accelerate their rise, but it hasn’t happened.
But growth is usually painful. The process is ugly and seems to constantly repeat itself. A 9-21 start to a season with playoff expectations tempts us to be hyperbolic, yet we shouldn’t be.
If the Timberwolves are to create anything substantial with the talent they have, everyone, including the players and the coach, needs to understand that it will take time. They are not the old Thunder and they shouldn’t be in any rush to try to be.
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