With draft nearing, Wolves have rare chance to build continuity
MINNEAPOLIS -- In the late 1980s, it was the return of professional basketball and the memories of championships during its first manifestation here. In the mid-'90s, one mystique-bearing high school senior ushered in the Timberwolves' first and only golden era to date. But in 2015, a series of highly fortunate events -- some intentional, some purely circumstantial, some a mutant combination of the two -- have brought as much promise to Minnesota hoops as it's seen since Kevin Garnett led the club to eight straight playoff appearances.
That's all it is -- hope. But it's a hard thing to come by regarding a club that hasn't been to the playoffs in 11 years and has the NBA's lowest winning percentage since the Wolves' 1989 inception.
In the past calendar year, they've bought hope. Dealt for it. Sold it. Lucked into it.
"This," Andrew Wiggins said during his rookie of the year award acceptance speech, "is the uprising."
It starts, of course, with Wiggins -- acquired in the rarest of transactions where a team forced to trade a disgruntled player (in this case, Kevin Love) ends up potentially better off than before -- and whomever Minnesota lands with the No. 1 pick in the June 25 draft. Assuming they keep it, the Wolves will be the first team in league history to have three straight top overall selections on the roster.
Thanks to the league's rookie pay scale included in the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, Minnesota will have a pair of potential superstars locked up through at least 2018 for about 13.5 percent of a salary cap that's expected to spike as the NBA's new TV deal kicks in. That's how smaller-market teams have been able to build -- bottom out, draft well, fill in roster gaps with role-playing free agents and hope the subsequent success is enough to keep the blue chippers when their contracts run out.
Under such a blueprint, coach and president of basketball operations Flip Saunders hopes Wiggins and either Jahlil Okafor or Karl-Anthony Towns, likely the top two choices in this year's draft, can be the next Jordan and Pippen or Kareem and Magic.
"It's difficult for teams to build through drafts because you have to be lucky, and what I mean by that is you have to have two or three straight years when you get high-quality players," Saunders said. "One, it's tough to get the draft picks, and sometimes you don't get it right. So you've got to hit it right.
"When you can build through the draft, you build for a long time. You're not just trying to pick a free agent, or whatever, and try to get over the hump. You're building continuity."
There are no guarantees, of course. For every Andrew Wiggins, there's a Kwame Brown. The 2014 No. 1 pick, Anthony Bennett, whose first two years in the league have been marked by little more than disillusion, is dangerously close to becoming the next.
But the Wolves have assets beyond whatever last summer's Love trade and some long-awaited lottery luck bring them. Shabazz Muhammad was one of the league's most improved players before suffering a season-ending injury. Zach LaVine is freakishly athletic and a matchup nightmare. Gorgui Dieng is a steady center who would complement either Okafor or Towns in the frontcourt rotation. Dynamic point man Ricky Rubio is surrounded by the kind of roster that suits his pass-first skill set, with athletic attackers who can run as well as they score. Veterans Kevin Martin and Nikola Pekovic are reliable point producers, when healthy. With another year to continue rebuilding and so many players on rookie deals, Saunders has room to maneuver in free agency and, if he so chooses, move assets to fit his overall schema.
And two of the men most responsible for Minnesota's eight straight playoff berths from 1997-2004 are back in charge.
Saunders is expected to coach at least one more season. Garnett has become re-entrenched with the franchise he someday hopes to buy and is expected to stick it out another season himself.
There's a new, state-of-the-art practice facility across the street from the Target Center. There are renovation plans to spruce up the old basketball barn. The place still shakes, as made evident during Garnett's February return that made the hair on his arms stand up, according to Saunders.
None of it means the playoffs in 2015-16. None of it means anything, definitively, for a team that won 16 games last season. But for the first time in a long time, and for as many reasons as they've ever had, Wolves stakeholders have reason to believe a corner could be turned.
And "could" is a good word around here.
"It's very exciting for me and, I think, for our fans," said owner Glen Taylor, who's overseen and financed both the rise (2004 Western Conference finals) and the fall (10 straight losing seasons, the Joe Smith debacle, and multiple star players' departures, including the Garnett trade in 2007).
"There's going to be a lot of enthusiasm," he added.
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