On Feb. 14, 2016, Kanye West tweeted, “Ima fix wolves.”
He didn’t.
However, lying to the public about turning the 17-37 Minnesota Timberwolves around during the All-Star break is hardly the worst thing he’s ever done.
Kanye was talking about tuning up his song “Wolves.” Still, many fans would have liked it if he would have also fixed the Timberwolves. People still reminisce about that team.
It was a fun group, but they finished 29-53. Minnesota hired Tom Thibodeau the following year, who eventually included LaVine in the Jimmy Butler package. Gersson Rosas took over for Thibodeau(on the front office side, anyway) and flipped Wiggins for D’Angelo Russell. Tim Connelly sent Towns, the last remnant of the Flip Saunders era, to the New York Knicks in early October.
Change is the only constant in Minnesota. Therefore, we should know how long it takes for things to click. Twenty games feels right. Still, it’s hard to watch the Wolves drop back-to-back games in Portland and give up a 26-6 run to the Sacramento Kings in a 115-104 loss on Nov. 27 and think they’re any good. However, given all the changes the Timberwolves constantly undergo, these things take time.
In the Chris Finch era alone, the Wolves reached the playoffs with the beloved Patrick Beverley core, only to blow it up with the Rudy Gobert trade. The Timberwolves had trouble adjusting to playing with Gobert and finished 42-40 that season.
A year later, Gobert was the Defensive Player of the Year, and the Wolves finished 56-26 and reached the Western Conference Finals for the first time in 20 years. Still, the Timberwolves were spending more than any other team in the league, had an ongoing ownership dispute, and were dealing with the ramifications of the NBA’s new second apron. They had to do something to make the team economically viable in the long term.
“A lot of it is kind of unknown,” Connelly admitted while discussing the second apron last year at his exit interview. “The biggest concern is where you are financially. It’s a big task for ownership. It’s a lot of money.
“It was one of those things [the league] put in kind of out of nowhere,” he added. “No one saw it coming.”
Connelly’s solution was to send Towns and his $220 million contract to New York, where he reconnected with Thibodeau and Rosas. Again, the Wolves asked for patience. Edwards would have to share possessions with Randle, Gobert had to trust that the newcomers would learn to defend around him, and Donte DiVincenzo had to be an effective 3-and-D player.
The Wolves were sorting all this out while fans expected them to build on their run to the conference finals last season. The loss to Sacramento seemed like a low point. It was Minnesota’s fourth-straight loss, including an inexplicable 110-105 defeat in Toronto, followed by close games against the Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets.
“It’s an ongoing process,” Finch said when a reporter asked when the Wolves would know whether their new roster was good after the Kings game. “I don’t know if there is an end date, like, ‘Hey, at 25 games, we’re going to do something radical.’”
Finch was moving the goalposts. He had previously said it takes a team 20 games to figure itself out. Sacramento was Game 18. However, Finch didn’t need to adjust the uprights. The Timberwolves gutted out a 93-92 win. After that game, they felt they had found themselves defensively because they were doing the little things right.
Since then, they’ve rattled off a 109-80 win over the Los Angeles Lakers, a 108-80 victory over the LA Clippers, and a 107-80 win over the Golden State Warriors. They have given up 342 points over their last four games, an NBA season-low this year. Minnesota’s defense allowed 92 points or fewer in four straight games, the first NBA team to do that since the Memphis Grizzlies in 2021.
“Everyone is guarding at a high level, but Jaden [McDaniels] and Rudy is being the anchors that we need them to be,” Edwards said after Minnesota’s win in San Francisco. “Naz and Julius is f—in’ playing defense. I’ve never seen them play defense before.”
Minnesota’s win over the Lakers was their 20th game of the season. It feels like they’ve found something. They have an offensive flow and stout defense. Things are starting to click. Kanye may not have been able to fix the 2016 Wolves team people loved, but time has corrected what ailed the Timberwolves earlier in the season.