Minnesota Timberwolves
The 2020-21 Minnesota Timberwolves season can be defined by terrible injury luck and an unusual coaching change that occurred midseason.
What did we learn?
Ryan Saunders was relieved of his duties on Feb. 21 after an NBA-worst 7-24 start to the season.
Saunders caught the very short end of the stick in never getting a fair chance to coach a healthy team. At the time of his firing, Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell had played just five games together total.
KAT sprained his wrist at the beginning of the season and then tested positive for COVID, missing 20 of the first 24 games. The very game before he returned in early February is when D-Lo’s leg soreness took a turn for the worst, requiring arthroscopic knee surgery and causing him to miss the next eight weeks.
The Minnesota Timberwolves did not hire an interim coach within the organization to replace Saunders, no they did not.
Instead, they somehow managed to poach Chris Finch from the Raptors during the middle of the season. Finch is known for being an offensive mastermind and his ties with T-Wolves GM Gersson Rosas go back to their Rockets days. This was obviously a move that Rosas already had his eye on.
The team did improve with Finch calling the shots. Number 1 overall pick Anthony Edwards leveled up from just being one of the most consistent power dunkers in the league and an inefficient chucker to a rookie who looked like a pure, bonafide scorer. (For the record, we did have a problem with Saunders not starting the #1 overall pick for the first 17 games of the season and for his reluctance to play Ant big minutes, never understood that one.) There is no doubt that playing with KAT also helped open up things for Ant-Man.
Ant-Man with Ryan Saunders as coach, mostly without KAT: 14.3 points per game and a 37.5 FG%
Ant-Man with Chris Finch as coach, mostly with KAT: 23.2 points per game and a 44 FG%
Finch ran a lot of the offense through KAT, something you can’t exactly do if KAT is on the bench in street clothes or at home in quarantine. While he is no Nikola Jokic, Towns is still a pretty good distributor for a 7-footer and he’s a natural scorer from inside and out. Ant-Man’s shot selection was refined and resulted in a lot more good looks.
Edwards is explosive and smooth, sophisticated yet different without making a huge fuss about it. (Shoutout J. Peterman!) His 33 percent from 3 doesn’t take into account all the difficult ones that he took early on and 7.2 three-point attempts per game is a lot for a rook. Ant-Man did also have ten games where he made four or more 3’s while shooting over 40 percent. He’s quite capable of catching fire and lighting you up, or dunking on top of you and snatching your soul.
A few games before D-Lo finally returned from his knee surgery in early April is of course when Malik Beasley strained his hamstring and missed the last 22 games of the season. Beasley was having his best full season as a pro. The T-Wolves only played four games with all of Towns, Russell, Edwards and Beasley on the court. Four games all season with their top four guys, and the last such occurrence was on Jan. 13.
Over the last month and a half of the season without Beasley, the T-Wolves had their best stretch of the year, riding the trio of KAT, D-Lo and Ant to the 13th most efficient offense in the league over that time. Minnesota went 11-11, playing .500 ball!
The defense still had a difficult time stopping anybody as we knew this roster would. That’s going to be the linchpin going forward so long as KAT and D-Lo are the centerpieces of the franchise making $61 million between them next year.
The T-Wolves were probably too good towards the end of the season, decreasing their already slim chances of keeping their first-round pick, owed to the Warriors from the D-Lo trade. Minnesota did end up losing that pick (#7, could have been worse), but there is still something to be said for actually winning some ball games. Optimism within the organization. Pride. Momentum. Happiness. Winning tendencies have to be a good thing for teams that are used to losing.
If all of these pups can stay healthy and on the court together, expect them howling into the night in unison sooner than you’d think.
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Did our preseason Over/Under prediction hit?
Under 30.5 wins, however, we see a lot of T-Wolves Overs in our future. (To clarify, Overs on game totals this season with Minny’s potent offense and paltry defense.)
T-Wolves 2020-21 Record: (23-49)
YES, our preseason Over/Under prediction hit!
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What’s Next?
With the return of 12 players, this roster is mostly set. (And pretty dang close to the luxury tax.) Player development is as imperative here as anywhere in the league.
We haven’t gotten nearly enough from Jarrett Culver, a former #6 overall pick who averaged 5 points per game this season while dealing with an ankle injury that eventually resulted in surgery in April. Yet another young wolf this team needs to be healthy.
There are role players here that we like. Naz Reid is one of those guys you think is decent enough and then he will have you shouting, “NAZ REID!?!” And Jaden McDaniels definitely has some chops.
While the T-Wolves don’t have a first-round pick (or any second rounders) in this year’s draft, they do at least have last year’s first-round pick Leandro Bolmaro who played with FC Barcelona and has a pretty impressive highlight reel.
The new ownership here presents a possibility for real progress, no more of the inept Glen Taylor. Unless A-Rod and co. move the team to Seattle. That would really be some shit. Thankfully for Minnesotans, it sounds like it’s not going to be the case.
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Favorite T-Wolves Highlight from the 2020-21 Season:
Watching this power dunk unfold on live TV was one of the top moments of the entire season.
