National Basketball Association

NBA Season Preview: Andrew Wiggins is the key to everything

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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A lot is being expected of the Minnesota Timberwolves this season. Some are projecting the Wolves to go from the 13th-best team in the Western Conference to a team that pushes for 50 wins and makes the playoffs. That would be banking on a lot of internal improvement considering they have an average age of just 26.5 and their projected rotation has an average age of 24.3 per ESPN’s Kevin Pelton.

To be fair, there are legitimate reasons to think Minnesota will get better quickly. They have Karl-Anthony Towns who is almost universality considered the best young player in the NBA, and for good reason. His skill set on both ends screams ‘transcendent player’ and it’s not a stretch to imagine him as the best player in the league in five years, with several MVP awards in his future. Minnesota is also now coached by Tom Thibodeau, who has flaws and maybe burns out players, but is also a really, really good coach whose style and ability seems well suited to maximize what this team has in terms of personnel.

And then there’s Andrew Wiggins, Minnesota’s third-year wing who is still finding his place in the league. When the Wolves acquired him in deal that sent Kevin Love to Cleveland, he represented a franchise reboot; dealing Love meant transitioning to a full-on rebuild and Wiggins was better than any other starting block they could have hoped to acquire at that point. When Minnesota added Wiggins, he was made the centerpiece of their roster and he was offered a chance to blossom in a way he would have never been able to in Cleveland.

Understandably, the Wolves’ plans changed when they were able to get Towns atop of the 2015 Draft. With Towns in the fold, the pressure for Wiggins to be at the center of everything no longer exists. While he remains integral to how good the Wolves can actually be and he still probably needs to be become very, very good for his team to reach its max potential, the franchise doesn’t revolve around him as much as it would if someone like Jahil Okafor or Emmanuel Mudiay was his running mate.

But for this year, for the Wolves to be the best version of themselves, a lot of the pressure is on Wiggins. He will be tasked with defending the opposition’s best perimeter scorer — carrying the primary responsibility for slowing down James Harden in the Rockets’ new faster offense, trying to handle LeBron James in the open floor, and tracking Kevin Durant amongst the other countless problems the Warriors present.