Could the Minnesota Timberwolves Actually Be Better Without Kevin Love?
When one of the 10 best basketball players in the world decides it’s high time to ditch your team for greener pastures, “getting better” probably isn’t too high on the list of likely outcomes.
Sort out the pieces, plan for the future, survive: These are the actionable items with which the Minnesota Timberwolves are supposed to be concerned.
But get better? Without Kevin Love? Like, this season?
Don't say we didn't tell you so.
Love’s departure is sure to take its toll, of course, both immediately and in the long term. His statistical production was simply too steady and too stellar to merely write off as a fungible loss.
| Stat | Output | Team Rank | % of Team Production |
| Points | 26.1 | 1st | 24.4 |
| Rebounds | 12.5 | 1st | 27.9 |
| Three-pointers | 190 | 1st | 31.7 |
| PER | 26.9 | 1st | n/a |
| Win Shares | 14.3 | 1st | n/a |
Not to mention that from a pure PR perspective, trading away your franchise’s two best players—first Kevin Garnett, now Love—won’t exactly help your cause in future free-agent pitches.
Like a ship without its main mast, Minnesota must seem to many like little more than an aimless vessel, waiting for the waves to send it to a watery grave.
Unless, that is, the Timberwolves brass do what any self-respecting admiral might: dump the excess cargo, tighten the remaining sails and recalibrate to become a faster, sleeker clipper—a stronger one, if all breaks right.
Here’s what we know: As far as return hauls go, the Wolves made out like princely pirates. Not only did they land Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett from the Cleveland Cavaliers, but they also reeled in Thaddeus Young from the Philadelphia 76ers.
To review, that’s respectively a pair of upside-laden former No. 1 picks and a hyper-versatile veteran coming off the best season of his seven-year NBA career. All for a player who, even had Minnesota made the most potent pitch possible, likely would’ve walked away next summer anyway.
Looking at Minnesota’s likely rotation, a few hallmarks in particular stick out: speed, length and quickness (Nikola Pekovic’s beastly brawn notwithstanding). Wiggins, Young, Ricky Rubio, Kevin Martin, J.J. Barea, Corey Brewer, Gorgui Dieng: These are guys tailor-made for pushing the tempo.
Not that the Wolves have been the NBA equivalent of Dean Smith’s North Carolina Tar Heels—far from it. In fact, Minnesota finished fourth in pace for the 2013-14 season, the fourth time in Love’s six-year tenure the team registered in the top 10, according to Hollinger's team stats.
Still, it’s worth wondering whether the recent hiring of Flip Saunders, who marshaled the Wolves during the Garnett glory years in the mid-2000s, stands at diametric odds with the team’s seemingly built-in blueprint.
Even this ignores a fundamental aspect of Saunders’ coaching philosophy: While his three-year stint with the Detroit Pistons from 2005 through 2008 was typified by one of the league’s slowest paces, only three times during Saunders’ 10 years in Minnesota did his teams wind up outside the top 13. For two straight seasons in 1997-98 and 1998-99, the Wolves actually finished in the top five in pace, according to Basketball-Reference.com.
To be sure, the NBA as a whole was a much slower, defense-oriented league back then. All the same, Saunders’ career—punctuated by a solid .548 winning percentage—has never been about forcing talent to fit a particular stylistic template.
That should be music to the ears of Wolves fans. While Saunders might not elicit the excitement of an overhyped first-time coach, his track record is anything but run-of-the-mill.
But nor does he necessarily view his team as an effete, offense-first force—a perspective he made all too apparent in a January interview with MinnPost.com’s Britt Robson:
"When I came here, someone from the organization came to me and said, ‘You’re going to love our guys. It is the greatest group of guys and we have no problems with them. They are fun to be around and they don’t argue.’ And I said, ‘That might be a problem.’ Because sometimes you need to have at least that one guy who is kind of out there who has that tough personality and brings a little of that grit.
"
Saunders acknowledges that to have even an outside shot at cracking the 2015 playoff picture, the Timberwolves must first and foremost forge a more consistent defensive presence beyond Ricky Rubio and Corey Brewer’s perimeter chaos.
The development of Wiggins will be key to this equation. Indeed, for all his sky-high hype, Wiggins’ defense is one thing upon which Saunders should be able to rely right out of the gate. That in turn should allow Minnesota to initiate the kind of uptempo approach that should remain its offensive hallmark.
That’s not to say the magic will be there immediately. If anything was learned from Love’s six-season postseason-less spell, it’s that the Western Conference is as deep as it is unforgiving.
Then again, it’s not as if Saunders is walking blindly into traffic—after a year spent serving as the team’s president of basketball operations, the former Minnesota Golden Gopher knows this roster better than just about anybody.
In terms of losing Love, Saunders couldn’t have asked for a better slew of assets. But that doesn’t mean the resulting pieces are the ones that’ll fit the final puzzle, a fact Bleacher Report’s Joseph Zapata highlighted in a recent column:
"This team will probably adopt a fast-paced offense that will allow their young athletic players to flourish. Last season the Washington Wizards and the Toronto Raptors used their youth to their advantage by running an uptempo offense, and both teams made it to the playoffs.
Of course, a fast-paced offense may not suit Pekovic or the aging Martin very well. With potential young replacements such as Dieng and Muhammad on the roster, the Wolves may want to trade away some of their older assets.
"
Might Minnesota become both younger and better in the months to come? It’s certainly possible—advisable, even, given Wiggins and Bennett’s yet-to-be-determined fits as potential franchise cornerstones.
Young in particular could be key to the overall equation. Not only is he being tasked with playing Love’s old position, but his $9.7 million player option for the 2015-16 season, according to HoopsHype.com, looms large as a significant near-future bellwether for where the Wolves stand as a franchise on the rise.
If they can keep him at a reasonable price, Young could prove a potent piece indeed. Lose him, and Minnesota will have to fill the power forward hole anew. That Bennett stands the best chance of actuating Young's ceiling is a fact that's doubtless lost on the Timberwolves' brass.
Young’s five-tool skill set, Rubio’s development into an elite-level point guard, Wiggins’ weighty expectations: Saunders will be tasked with managing all of them.
The stakes, for a franchise seemingly festooned with failure, couldn’t be starker. Exceed expectations, and you assure the last flickering flame left in Love’s wake can be kindled anew. Flounder in playoff-less purgatory, and it might be years before there’s air enough to set a spark.
That’s not to say Minnesota making the postseason would somehow be a mark to Love’s discredit—far from it. Rather, such addition by subtraction would only reinforce the fact that while it’s nice to have a superstar gracing the marquee, it’s the chemistry on the court that matters most.
Like last year’s Phoenix Suns, the Timberwolves are destined to grace the bottom of many a preseason power ranking. But if Jeff Hornacek’s plucky Suns proved anything, it’s that the whole is almost always greater than the sum of its parts.
Good thing, then, that Minnesota need only worry about making up for one.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
