Friday Cup of Canis

Happy Friday, friends. I hope you’ve all had a great week and are getting ready to enjoy some beautiful weather this weekend.

For me, my mood is high because my favorite basketball team is winning some real-life basketball games. If you’re here to complain about losing a ping-pong ball or two, please complain elsewhere. Positive vibes only, today.

Seriously, though. I’d do things that would put me in jail to add Cade Cunningham or Evan Mobley to this team, and I still cannot quite understand what bothers people so much about seeing this team actually compete.

This is, quite literally, what we’ve been hoping to see since the very second Gersson Rosas traded for D’Angelo Russell. It would’ve been nice to see this in January, when more teams were taking all of these regular season games a bit more seriously, but beggars can’t be choosers. And friends, at this point I’m a beggar when it comes to Minnesota Timberwolves winning basketball games.

I understand that teams may be taking the Timberwolves lightly, and that this time of the year isn’t exactly full-steam ahead for a lot of teams. That doesn’t change the process of what we’re seeing though, which to me is that of a team making huge strides.

Forget that the Wolves are now 10-6 in games with Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell this season. The real inspiring part to me is that you can see how the puzzle pieces are starting to fit. The downhill threat of Anthony Edwards, combined with the outside shooting of Russell and the general All-World talent of KAT makes for a brutally tough offense to guard. Add in Jaden McDaniels on the wing, and they’re really cooking.

The move by Chris Finch to use KAT as more of a Jokic-lite type playmaker, which has freed up D’Angelo Russell to play more of his natural combo guard role, has started to make this lineup make sense. For the first time in a while, I truly feel like there’s something to look forward to with this group. I’m not as optimistic as many others, and while adding one more elite prospect would obviously be preferable, I feel good about this group at least being competitive next year regardless.

That’s all I can ask for at this point.