Fun Basketball is Back in Minneapolis

We’ve now seen two games from our mighty Timberwolves since the trade deadline rollercoaster, with the most recent game in Toronto being D’Angelo Russell’s debut.

It’s impossible to take too much from such a limited sample size, good or bad, but I feel comfortable making this declaration — this team should be fun. They may not win a ton of games to end this season, or even through 2021, but I can say that with quite a bit of confidence that the “fun-tax” is entirely gone.

Now, some of you may disagree by pointing to the defense, and that’s fine. You’ve probably got a pretty solid point.

However, the reality is we’ve seen so many disgusting, hideous, embarrassing performances over the past (insert large integer) years. If nothing else, this core should make basketball enjoyable to watch again because of the offense.

Again, small sample size and all, but the offense has been electric thus far. In back-to-back games against high-level defensive opponents, the Wolves opened the games with 81 and 75 point halves. I can put up with some losing in the short-term while these guys bomb away AND actually make the shots. That makes this all so much more bearable.

I can think of a lot worse things I could do with my time than watch D’Angelo Russell, Karl-Anthony Towns, Malik Beasley, and the rest of the crew fire away from deep without fear.

We’ll have more on this in the coming weeks, but is it possible that the current group of starters will never be able to defend well enough to spend major minutes together? Yeah, it is. This is just the start, though. This post-deadline portion of the season is similar to a college football coach bringing in his first recruiting class. This is the groundwork with which everything else can be built off.

As mentioned before, the best part is just how fun that groundwork is. It’s a similar feeling, for me at least, to the young KAT, Wiggs, LaVine days. The difference is that KAT, D-Lo, and Malik Beasley have a shot to be a much better cohesive core than that previous group has become.

What’s the point of all of this, really? Well, it’s really just to sit back, relax, and enjoy watching these kids bomb away. There is hope again. They gave up a boat load of points last night, and that surely will happen several more times as the season finishes up. It’s going to be a lot more bearable for all of us involved if they’re scoring enough to keep those games interesting anyways, which figures to be the case.

Fun basketball is back. Let’s just enjoy that for a while.