Winning 40 games in a cutthroat Western Conference is really not that bad at all… but the Minnesota Timberwolves did that with Kevin Love, a player they no longer have this season.
What Went Wrong Last Season?
The Timberwolves played in the Western Conference – that’s what went wrong for them. Minnesota would have been a 50-win team with an Eastern Conference schedule, but the West wore down the T-Wolves. It even denied the Phoenix Suns a playoff berth despite the fact that Phoenix won 48 games. When a team finishes 14 games over .500 and doesn’t make the playoffs, you know a conference is harsh and merciless. The Timberwolves weren’t even the first team out of the mix in the West, even though they had a better record than the eighth playoff team in the East, the Atlanta Hawks (38-44).
What else went wrong for the Timberwolves last season? They were not a good three-point shooting team, and that’s with Kevin Love in their lineup. The T-Wolves finished 26th in the league in that category. They were also last in blocked shots, a reflection of Love’s lack of defensive strength near the rim, coupled with his focus on grabbing rebounds more than bodying up in the low post. The Timberwolves were also a below-average defensive team (26th in the league) and a similarly poor defensive rebounding team (also 26th). Their two-point field goal percentage defense rated 28th as teams hit more than 50 percent of their twos against Minnesota. As you might be able to imagine from those statistics, the Timberwolves were also near the bottom of the league in made field goals allowed and overall field goal percentage defense. Their poor level of rebounding, especially on defense, also enabled opponents to shoot a lot of shots. Minnesota was next-to-last in the Association in field goal attempts allowed. All these numbers came crashing down on the Wolves by season’s end. If Minnesota had been around 20th in the league in these various measurements instead of falling in the 26-29 range, the Wolves might have been able to make up that nine-game deficit between themselves and the eighth playoff team in the West, the Dallas Mavericks.
Offseason Changes
The Timberwolves stood at the center of the league’s offseason activity. They knew that Kevin Love wanted out of Minneapolis and that he desired to play for a title contender. The Timberwolves fulfilled Love’s wish by sending him to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a three-team deal that brought Minnesota the No. 1 pick in the recent NBA draft, Andrew Wiggins from the University of Kansas. The Timberwolves also got the top pick from the previous draft, Anthony Bennett, who needs to be able to make a dramatic improvement in the coming season, or otherwise he’s a bust in the making. The Wolves also got Thaddeus Young from the Philadelphia 76ers. The team drafted Zach LaVine out of UCLA and Glenn Robinson III out of Michigan. It landed Mo Williams, who spent last season with the Portland Trail Blazers. Last but not least, longtime coach Rick Adelman retired, and Flip Saunders – who had coached the Timberwolves a decade ago, leading the team to the Western Conference Finals before coaching the Detroit Pistons to three straight East Finals from 2006 through 2008 – is now the team’s head coach once again.
Projected Finish
The loss of Kevin Love brought about the pickup of several players who could form the building blocks of a good team in the future. Wiggins is going to become the player this franchise hopes will be everything he’s billed to be. The Thaddeus Young acquisition gives the Wolves a reliable shooter-scorer on a certain level, but Young is hardly what anyone would call an elite player in the league. The Bennett and Williams additions could actually harm the team, since Bennett looks like a bust and Williams is just getting very old. Minnesota is in a situation where it needs to be a lot more effective on offense, since its defense doesn’t look very tough. Unfortunately, the Timberwolves don’t seem to be ready to be that good on offense. They’re going to take a few steps back without Kevin Love.
Pick: 12th in Western Conference
