Finding Blueprints for Minnesota Timberwolves to Make Playoffs in 2015-16
Barring a trade, the lottery-winning Minnesota Timberwolves will start the 2015-16 NBA season with the last three No. 1 draft picks suited up in their colors.
That fact alone should give Wolves fans plenty of hope.
The front-office staff, as you can see in this clip from the team's official Twitter feed, is pretty excited:
But how optimistic should Minnesota supporters be about a quick turnaround? How realistic is an immediate playoff return after a lottery win?
That's the whole point of building through the draft isn't it? Getting back to postseason basketball?
Surprising as it sounds, it's actually not so uncommon for a lottery winner to vault back into the playoffs the very next year. It's not easy, but we've seen it happen four times since 1994. Five, if you count the Cleveland Cavaliers making it this season—even though they did it after a massive roster overhaul that involved trading Andrew Wiggins, the player they drafted No. 1 overall, to the Timberwolves.
That anomaly aside, it's not so hard to find examples that more closely resemble Minnesota's current situation.
We'll start with the 1994 lottery, as that was the year the current weighting system (which gives the team with the worst record a 25 percent chance of getting the top pick) was implemented. In addition, we'll rule out the 1997 San Antonio Spurs, who won the lotto and grabbed Tim Duncan but added him to a roster that already had superstar David Robinson.
Making the playoffs the very next year was a foregone conclusion.
Great as some of Minnesota's talent is, nobody on the roster is the Admiral. So that comparison falls flat pretty quickly.
That leaves us with a handful of examples that fit pretty well.
The 2005-06 Milwaukee Bucks and the 2006-07 Toronto Raptors
These teams get lumped together not just because they leaped from winning the lottery to the postseason without missing a beat (in consecutive seasons, by the way, which is truly bizarre), but also because their roster makeups offer similar hope to the Timberwolves.
In the Bucks' case, free agents T.J. Ford and Bobby Simmons signed on the summer Milwaukee won the lottery and selected Andrew Bogut. Desmond Mason and Dan Gadzuric saw major minutes the year before and didn't figure nearly as prominently into the rotation when Bogut was a rookie—Mason, because he'd been traded and Gadzuric because, well, the Bucks figured out he was Gadzuric.
Otherwise, there were no major changes.
Toronto, which added Andrea Bargnani in the 2006 lottery, already had Chris Bosh, but it didn't make wholesale alterations either. Adding Anthony Parker and Jorge Garbajosa to the rotation helped. And Jose Calderon saw minutes off the bench, which was a change from the prior season.
Not only that, but the very same T.J. Ford who showed up on Milwaukee's rags-to-riches team the year before started for the Raptors in their bounce-back season. Apparently, all it takes to go from the lottery to the postseason is a healthy dose of Ford at the point.
In both Milwaukee and Toronto, the top picks were instrumental in the leap forward. Bargnani led the team in bench minutes with over 1,600, and he drilled 37.3 percent of his shots from long range. Bogut started 77 games and dramatically improved Milwaukee's interior defense.
No other playoff team had a rookie starter that year.
These aren't perfect examples by any stretch, but the Timberwolves can look at the marginal changes these two teams made and see that the right lottery pick can make a world of difference in a short amount of time.
The 2008-09 Chicago Bulls
When the Chicago Bulls nabbed hometown kid Derrick Rose with the top pick in the 2008 draft, it felt like everything was right in the world.
The Bulls had lucked out to an absurd degree, winning the lottery despite just a 1.7 percent chance of doing so, and there waiting for them was Rose. He became an immediate leader, topping the team in minutes as a rookie and putting up 16.8 points, 6.3 assists and 3.9 rebounds while shooting 47.5 percent from the field.
In addition, Joakim Noah's role increased, a 23-year-old Luol Deng was still in one piece and Ben Gordon was around to chuck up shots. The Bulls had a nice mix of young talent and veterans, and adding Rose put a jolt into all parties involved.
That's exactly what a top pick is supposed to do.
The 2015-16 Minnesota Timberwolves
Fast forward to now, and it's clear Minnesota has a few things in common with each of the three preceding examples.
First, though, there's a key difference: Wiggins, who took home Rookie of the Year honors and could sniff an All-Star berth next season. He's a little like Bosh was in Toronto, or Michael Redd in Milwaukee, but not quite.
He's less established and still very familiar with the difficulties a budding star faces.
Plus, his experience as a recent No. 1 overall pick (and to a much, much lesser extent, Anthony Bennett's) should be invaluable in guiding whomever it is the Timberwolves select this June.
That's a key advantage that no other team we've mentioned could boast.
As is having 39-year-old surefire Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett around, which he will be, based on head coach Flip Saunders' comments to Ron Clements of SportingNews.com:
"Whoever we take, he's going to be able to help that player. ... He's a free agent and he can do pretty much what he wants, but I think he feels pretty comfortable with our situation and he's going to be even more excited now with another great, young talent coming in.
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There are veterans who should enjoy better health and bigger minutes like Shabazz Muhammad, Kevin Martin and Ricky Rubio.
There are promising youngsters in addition to Wiggins, such as Gorgui Dieng and Zach LaVine, who are bound to improve.
Perhaps most importantly, there's enough cap flexibility to go out and make those fringe rotation additions that contributed to the success of those Milwaukee and Toronto teams. With around $56 million committed to guaranteed salaries next season, per BasketballInsiders.com, the Timberwolves can make some vital tweaks.
There's a lot to like here. So much, in fact, that it's a little confusing, per John Krawczynski of the Associated Press:
A Little Reality Check
The sobering distinction between the Timberwolves and these other success stories is that Minnesota earned its place atop the lottery. It had the worst record last year and won the top pick because the odds worked out how they should have.
Milwaukee, Toronto and Chicago all leaped up the lotto ladder against the odds, securing the No. 1 pick with win-loss records that didn't suggest they needed it as badly as some other teams. For that reason, their lottery-to-playoff jumps weren't nearly as difficult.
Those three teams notched an average of 30 victories the year they won the lottery. Minnesota won just 16 last season, and it plays in a conference that could easily send a 50-win club home with the No. 9 seed next year.
It'll be tough sledding for the Wolves—tougher than any of the teams mentioned so far. And there's no guarantee Minnesota will make the right pick, or that either of the two likely top options—Jahlil Okafor or Karl-Anthony Towns—will have a massive impact.
Difficulties and complications abound.
But hey, this isn't the time for talk like that. The draft is just a few weeks away, and the Timberwolves have a ton of promising talent. And even if their path back to the playoffs doesn't perfectly align with the ones traveled in the past, at least they know there is a path.
For now, that's enough.
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