FanPost

Sink or Swim?

Or in Minnesota, Freeze.

However, in all seriousness, what is going to happen this season with the Timberwolves? After all, we have two first-overalls on the team, a point guard nobody really gets but everybody really wants to like, and a ton of actually pretty quality vets and rooks. Where will they finish the year? Basement? Worse than the Sixers? Or maybe we are a playoff bound squad of young'uns. Or maybe we are just halfway decent.

In my opinion, the playoffs are 100% impossible, and not because of our talent, or lack thereof, but instead because of the Western conference's unbelievable hierarchy. There are 5 (Clippers, Warriors, Mavericks, Spurs, OKC) Western teams all but guaranteed to make the playoffs. The remaining three spots belong to the best three of Denver, Houston, Portland, Memphis, and Phoenix. Utah probably won't make it, LA probably won't make it, Sacramento probably won't make it, and then there's two teams almost lost in a limbo.

New Orleans and us.

Everybody knows New Orleans and their video game-like starting lineup that only played 90 minutes together, so we'll skip them and only use them as an idea. A team that was rather awful last year in an extremely hard Western conference that has the capabilities to win more games than it loses, a good starting place for making the playoffs.

So let's talk Timberwolves. The Timberwolves are ranked rather poorly right now, as low as 29th in some NBA power rankings (thank God nobody thinks we're worse than the Sixers) and are being written off as we speak to be stuck in the lottery for the time being.

However, that doesn't have to be the case.

Take the Toronto Raptors as a proof of concept; a terrible team trades away a "star" player (Don't worry I recognize that Rudy Gay is not even remotely on the level of Kevin Love and there was a teammate in Derozan that could step in and instantly fill the massive offensive gap left behind) and suddenly shocks everybody by winning games. Kevin Love netted a pretty large return, with a lot of upside, upside that could translate into wins.

For the sake of this exercise, let's assume inherent chemistry exists on the roster, as that is the only way the team plays well. As such, team points per game and player points per game will be the only statistic inspected. Yes this is a rather flawed system, but my knowledge and application of advanced statistics and metric statistics wouldn't really help me or a reader in any way, so how many buckets your team gets is all I'm looking at.

Last season the Raptors' starting lineup averaged 73.2 ppg, with Derozan's 22.7 leading the way, followed by Lowry's 17.9, Valanciunas 11.3, Ross 10.9, and Johnson 10.4. Quality players off their bench were Patterson's 9.1, Vasquez' 9.5, Salmons 5.0 and Hansborough 4.9. In total, thats 101.7 ppg for their main players.

Now time for the Timberwolves, and here's where most of the speculation comes into play. Let's assume Wiggins has a relatively productive year and finishes in the top 3 for rookie output. Let's also assume that offseason work will translate into a few extra points for Ricky. Gorgui gets a little older and better, Young holds down the fort better than in Philly, Bennett actually plays basketball, Pekovic gets some big boy buckets, Brewer gets 51 again, Martin keeps hitting jumpers and LaVine takes jump shots off of two feet instead of a one-footed leaner. How unreasonable are these numbers:

  • Wiggins: 16.0 ppg
  • Rubio: 11.5 ppg (+2 ppg from last year)
  • Martin: 17.6 ppg (-1.5 from last year)
  • Pekovic: 14 ppg (-3.5 ppg from last year)
  • Young: 17 ppg (-.9 ppg from last year)
  • Bennett: 9 ppg (+4.8 ppg from last year)
  • Dieng: 9 ppg (+4.2 ppg from last year)
  • Brewer: 9.3 ppg (-3 ppg from last year)
  • Lavine: 6.5 ppg

None of these numbers are seriously outrageous, when alone. Most are actually downgrades from last year, mostly due to impending changes in ball movement. Martin and Pekovic specifically will see downgraded useage as Wiggins and Dieng will cut into their time significantly (as well as LaVine and Brewer to some extent for Martin). Thaddeus Young will see less touches, providing Anthony Bennett plays like the fourth first overall pick he is. The lineups will be a hassle with a few guys all being capable of playing the 3 but no complete 3 except maybe Brewer, but again, these numbers aren't completely unbeievable, but as a large group they are rather far fetched, as this assumes our starting 5 scores 76.1 ppg and our starting 9 scores 109.9. Thats a lot, especially for a team slated for the basement. Each player has these capabilities but as a group these numbers won't play out.


Or will they?


Why is it guaranteed that all of these players can't have a great year? Poorer teams have played well on good years, and theres nothing stopping these Timberwolves from having a good year and surprising everybody. Sure we might need 50 wins to get the 8th seed (which is absolutely ridiculous) but hell I can very very realistically see these guys all coming together under Flip and playing good basketball, including the other bench players as well (STARING AT YOU SHABAZZ)(you too JJ and Mo). Unfortunately, due to the setup of the Western Conference, they have to do this night in and night out against the best competition in the NBA.


All in all, I like these new look Timberwolves, because I like 12 potentially-actually-pretty-good rotation players. I like Kevin Love more but I like these new Wolves still. This will be fun (and hopefully good) basketball to watch and should return a good draft pick, even if we have a "great" year. Unrealistically, .500 would be a great feat for these kids to pull off, but realism exists. Their ceiling rests somewhere around 30-52 and 35-47 (which is actually pretty good in the West) with the basement being the Seventy-Seveners, because, as I've mentioned before, we can't as bad as the Sixers.