One of the odd quirks of sports fandom is how much the suffering eclipses the savoring.
Countless hours are spent on the precipice of dread, the memory’s overstuffed file cabinet of past disappointments hauled open again and again. It’s like opting for the Novocain before the x-ray, presupposing the cavity is there and the drill is coming. After a while, the suffering is accommodated and the martyrdom morphs into masochism. We can’t enjoy the bourbon without a dash of bitters.
This mindset is especially relevant at the moment for followers of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The team has just completed its most successful regular season in two decades, compiling the second-best won-lost record in its 35-year existence. They have earned the right to home-court advantage in a first-round playoff series that begins this weekend. But their matchup is with an opponent that has thrashed them in all three meetings this season.
In 48 hours, I’ll engage the pros and cons confronting the Wolves in that upcoming series against the Phoenix Suns. But first, let’s leave the eclipses to astronomy and spend a column savoring what the Wolves have accomplished over the past six months.
Six months ago, I framed my 2023-24 Timberwolves season preview in the form of four key questions with answers determining how the team would fare. Revisiting them now creates a template for demonstrating how and why the Wolves thrived this season.
How effectively can Rudy Gobert alter or reconcile his career-long habits to fit the needs of his new team?
Back in October, original critics of the Gobert trade were doubling-down on their smug assessment that the “Stifle Tower” from France was a terrible fit beside fellow big man Karl-Anthony Towns and too set in his ways after having the Utah Jazz franchise structure their systems around his specific skills for nine seasons at both ends of the court. (For the record, I was pleasantly intrigued by the trade, more cynical after his first season in Minnesota.)
During the off-season, Wolves Coach Chris Finch asked Gobert to trust the on-ball defensive skills of his teammates enough to expand his range of coverage away from mere rim protection and to create lanes for his teammates on offense by drawing defenders down to the baseline (in “the dunker’s spot”) as well doing the dirty work of setting screens for pick-and-rolls.
Gobert listened, then adjusted.
His enhanced ability to flex, lead and coordinate his teammates at the defensive end is the single biggest factor in the Wolves winning 56 games – 14 more than the year before and nearly a dozen past the 44.5 victories projected by the Las Vegas oddsmakers at the onset of the 2023-24 campaign.
Yes, unlike his first year in Minnesota, Gobert was healthy to start the season – as was KAT, who missed 57 games with injuries in 2022-23. He also benefited from a full year with a familiar cohort in point guard Mike Conley, and from the learning curve that comes from enduring the often-awkward experience of adjusting to his new teammates and vice versa.
But those pedestrian explanations can’t fully account for the way Gobert transformed the 2023-24 Timberwolves. This franchise was blessed to have one of the greatest defenders in NBA history, Kevin Garnett, in the fold for 14 seasons. But never has a Timberwolves team been able to reduce opposing offenses to rubble with such a cohesive blend of size, sinew and joyously purposeful pressure as we saw this season.
NBA defense is a lunch-bucket pursuit. The Wolves got after it more diligently than anybody else. They held opponents to 2.2 fewer points per 100 possessions than the second-best team, a huge gap. Add 2.2 points to the second-best defense and you drop down to 10th; add 2.2 points to the 10th best defense and you plummet to 19th.
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Succinctly put, the Wolves defense was special, and the emblem, engine, tone-setter and swat-getter putting the branding iron on this identity was no mystery. Gobert made the intangibles tangible. He was almost always where he was supposed to be in terms of system and rotation – and yet frequently flew to where you hoped he could be, erasing a breakdown. His example inspired his teammates and filled them with confidence. He fostered a shared sense of mission, which put sustenance in the lunch bucket.
A year ago at this time, people openly wondered whether Gobert had aged past his prime. Today, he is the consensus favorite to win his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award. His ability to adapt and form a hybrid between what worked in Utah and what best benefits his teammates in Minnesota was a synergy that boosted his blocks per-game from 1.4 to 2.1, and enabled him to shoot slightly better and slightly more often while committing his fewest turnovers per-game in six years.
Asked where the Wolves have grown most this season that will matter in the playoffs, burgeoning Wolves superstar Anthony Edwards answered simply, “trusting Rudy.”
After a recent game, Finch said, “Rudy is the reason we don’t lose. He doesn’t let us lose these games. He’s been this way all season. He’s an incredible floor-raiser. He just brings it and knows when his team needs him to do this the most.”
After making all 10 of his shots and grabbing 19 rebounds in a three-point win against Atlanta last week, podcaster Dane Moore asked Gobert if this is the best he’s played in his entire career. After a pause, Gobert said, “Yeah, I think so.”
It’s a feel-good story that should rightfully be savored. Right on cue, Gobert has written a piece in the Player’s Tribune, released on Monday, that perfectly captures the moment from his perspective.
Will Ant’s next leap include upgrading some of the subtle but damaging flaws in his game?
In some ways, this question was posed as a cautionary note amid the bandwagon of fawning press and testimonials from retired NBA stars that Ant was getting after playing for the USA team in the World Cup over the summer.
The point was, Ant is guaranteed to wow you on a regular basis, with a panoply of skills that check the box on the most important thing you need to compete for a championship in the NBA: A star capable of taking it to another level – a transcendent level. Where Gobert is a floor-raiser, Ant is a ceiling-raiser. Great teams need a mix of both.
In the 2023-24 season, Ant continued his career-long pattern of yearly improvement. For the fourth straight season, he scored more points and doled out more assists than the year before. He got to the free throw line more frequently – a Finch priority. In terms of team play, the Wolves have never scored more points per possession or allowed fewer points per possession with Ant on the floor than they did this season.
But the question was a nit-picky query and there were nits to pick in Ant’s game this season.
There were stretches of the season where he was distracted by the lack of foul calls from the refs – he was among the league leaders in technical fouls. Not coincidentally, these temper tantrums occurred more frequently in games where had held the ball too long and tried to drive through multiple players instead of making the simple pass. This isolation-heavy form of offense also affected KAT and when both were guilty the Wolves offense suffered.
Ant also continued to be a magnificent on-ball defender when he felt the matchup was sufficiently challenging, a measuring stick for his premium talent. But he was not a consistently good on-ball defender and his off-ball defense was again sporadic, albeit not as harmful because the Wolves team defense was better able to absorb his neglect.
Ant is also 22 years old and consciously works to mitigate his shortened, youthful, attention span. He is a sponge around Conley, to the point where his Conley-infused commitment to “getting off the ball,” might become a concern if and when the rest of the Wolves offense goes fallow. He has worked hard, and successfully, to develop a better rapport with Gobert on offense.
The bottom line here is that “upgrading some of the subtle but damaging flaws his game,” is not as essential as retaining that ceiling-raising splendor and continuing to be a generous and popular teammate despite his exalted status. Watching Ant bookend a crucial early-March road trip with a game-saving block and a savage dunk that went viral in terms of both social media and locker room bonhomie is to recognize, and savor, that this thrill machine is still five or six years away from his prime.
Can Chris Finch wring optimal value out of a suddenly overcrowded frontcourt?
Why yes, yes he can, and a hat tip to both the coach and to President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly for stacking up such an impressive collection of cool bigs.
The thrust of this question was triggered by the signing of Naz Reid, coupled with the return of Kyle “SloMo” Anderson on the final year of his contract, the return to health of KAT and the presence of Gobert. That is a lot of unique, oddly-composed talent to squeeze into the center and power forward positions.
The logjam remains germane because when KAT was sidelined for almost all of March this season, SloMo demonstrated once again that he thrives at power forward and has his game diminished operating as a small forward. This was true when he was in Memphis and San Antonio and it became especially notable this season when he lost the accuracy and then the confidence on his three-point shot, making the power forward slot even more of a haven for his playmaking and short midrange shooting.
But the heroes in the answer to this question are Naz and Finch. Naz turned the terms of his three-year contract into a bargain by flashing the quickness, handle, shooting range, and defense of a wing player, a combo forward. Being able to guard on the perimeter and score at all three levels (at the rim, behind the arc, at the free throw line) made him a complementary sidekick for Gobert, for KAT, and even for SloMo, in that they could invert their power-forward and small-forward dynamic to suit their separate talents.
Finch gets the credit because he never lost faith in SloMo even when the latter’s shooting woes were dinging the offense. He has also done a great job of juggling the bigs in ways that keep them all familiar with each other in various permutations. And his ability to get through to Gobert on the need for more systemic versatility was, as already stated, a transformative step forward for the team.
Can the Wolves reasonably rely on a full season of health from grizzled point guard Mike Conley?
Affirmative.
Playing 76 of 82 games, Conley logged 2,193 minutes, the most since he left Memphis after the 2018-19 season. Again we can appreciatively nod toward Connelly, who not only stole Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker in a trade back in February 2023, but made another deadline deal this season that brought an ideal backup for Conley in Monte Morris into the rotation. And to complete the trifecta, Connelly signed Conley to a new two-year contract at the bargain rate of $11 million per season.
The Wolves are heading into the playoffs with a plethora of play-makers, including Conley, Morris, Jordan McLaughlin, NAW (Alexander-Walker) and SloMo. Finch has deployed effective lineups using as many as four of them on the court at the same time. Taking Conley off the ball on occasion reduces his workload and enables him to fire away on catch and shoot threes (complementing the step-back threes he executes to great effect in high pick-and-rolls with Gobert). It has also improved the three-point shooting of J-Mac (McLaughlin) and NAW, who likewise are able to play off the ball.
Simply by dumping his offseason mistakes (free agent signees Shake Milton and Troy Brown Jr. plus a second-round draft pick were the cost for Morris) Connelly has assembled a backcourt contingent besides Ant that exhibits better long-range shooting and fewer turnovers. And he has guaranteed two more seasons of Conley, a gentle leadership giant of profound grace and professionalism, who will continue to sprinkle tiny diamonds of sage, time-tested insight into Ant eager consciousness.
Savor the thought.
Britt Robson
Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.
