Minnesota Timberwolves (16-40) at Miami Heat (36-21)

6:30 pm CST

Fox Sports North

After a semi-grueling back-to-back against the Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks, the Minnesota Timberwolves are back in action tonight as they make a stop in the house that Dwyane Wade built.

Despite the activity and excitement that came with the NBA Trade Deadline, it’s been an extremely disappointing start to 2020 for Minnesota. The Wolves enter Wednesday’s contest against the Heat as losers of 18 of their last 19 games, their only victory coming at home against the Los Angeles Clippers (a game in which D’Angelo Russell did not play in). With Towns sidelined for at least another week, it looks like Minnesota will continue to “hold those L’s” as they grind closer and closer to the top of the Tankathon standings, rather than the NBA standings.

The Wolves actually got into Miami a day early (can you blame them?) and from all accounts, it looks like their newest veteran leader (James Johnson) wasted no time showing his new pup teammates some of his Miami toys:

For those of you not scoring at home, James Johnson signed a 4-year/$60 million dollar deal back in the summer of 2017 with the Miami Heat, and from everything I can find on the internet, still calls South Beach home (which makes sense, since up until about two weeks ago he was a member of the Heat organization). The Players Tribune did a cool interview with JJ last October, and if you have 11-spare minutes today, I’d strongly suggest getting to know the man known by many as “Bloodsport.”

Projected Starting Lineups

Minnesota Timberwolves

PG: D’Angelo Russell
SG: Malik Beasley
SF: Josh Okogie
PF: Juancho Hernangomez
C: Naz Reid

Miami Heat

PG: Kendrick Nunn
SG: Duncan Robinson
SF: Jimmy Butler
PF: Kelly Olynyk
C: Bam Adebayo

As for the Wolves injury report:

As for the Heat, their most notable injury is to Jimmy Butler (ever heard of him), and his status as of this afternoon was officially AVAILABLE.