The Timberwolves are a formidable team, particularly when it comes to defense.
The informal calculations make sense: The Timberwolves would try to step it up by bringing in the be
st paint protector and defensive rebounder in the NBA. This comes after they played like the NBA’s best offense for four months of the 2021–22 season, but lost in the playoffs mostly because they couldn’t defend the paint and grab defensive rebounds. However, occasionally, an idea that seems appealing when sketched out turns out to be anything but in reality. Additionally, a few confusing circumstances appeared to be the undoing of the Rudy Gobert equation in Minnesota during the first year.
Gobert, who assisted France in winning silver at EuroBasket 2022, was given a late start to training camp. Arriving with multiple dents and bruises from his tournament career, he appeared weaker and less agile than he had during his ascent to defensive apex in Utah. Karl-Anthony Towns, the current All-NBA center for the Wolves, ended up in the hospital during the preseason after suffering a roughly 20-pound sickness. A calf strain would later lose him 51 games, ruining Minnesota’s best-laid intentions to let its massive pair work out the kind of chemistry that would be necessary to make all that size important, as well as to figure out how to avoid stifling Anthony Edwards’ style (and driving lanes).
The statistics from the previous season were dismal: while Towns and Gobert were on the court together, the Wolves barely beat their opponents; when Towns and Gobert were apart, the defense ranked in the bottom ten, and the offense, ranked in the bottom five. Somehow, the vibes frequently seemed considerably worse: Gobert and versatile veteran Kyle Anderson got into a sideline brawl in the regular-season finale, which resulted in the center being suspended for the play-in tournament’s opening game. Meanwhile, defensive star Jaden McDaniels broke his hand in a frustrated punch to a wall, which caused him to miss the entirety of Minnesota’s first-round playoff loss to Nikola Jokić’s Nuggets.
In order to entice Tim Connelly away from the championship-caliber squad he had established in Denver, Wolves ownership reportedly made a sizable offer that included an equity position in the team. Connelly made large, audacious plays like the Gobert gamble in an effort to win the team’s first championship. Connelly decided on a different, possibly even more audacious encore after the first year of the new period failed: not panicking.
The Wolves are finally witnessing the fruition of the vision that Connelly and associates had doodled on the back of that envelope, and they are reaping the benefits of their patience, one quarter of the 2023–24 NBA season having passed.
The head coach of the Wolves, Chris Finch, recently told reporters, “We needed to form an identity.” “The previous year, we were without a name. Every night, they were a little different.