This is an obituary for a team that has been dead for two hours.
This game was decided when the Minnesota Timberwolves, a team good enough to make the Western Conference Finals, put up only nine points in an entire opening quarter of an elimination playoff game.
There’s not much about the game that any of you readers would want to know that you haven’t already heard. Any time you go down 30 in a playoff game, there is a reasonable chance that things went wrong. Heck, it just happened to the Oklahoma City Thunder, and they returned the favor tonight. The difference is that the Wolves won’t have the chance to respond.
For many fans, reminders that this Wolves team shouldn’t have even been here to begin with ring hollow, but it should be celebrated that Minnesota can now boast six playoff series wins in its franchise history. Just two years ago, the number was only a third of that.
It feels as empty to write as it likely does to read.
The Wolves head into this offseason with a ton of questions and a potential transformation on the horizon. After trading Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks, who now face their own 3-1 deficit, Minnesota may need to make changes once again.
Three of the Wolves' eight “starter quality players” will be free agents, unless Naz Reid or Julius Randle opt into their options as a favor to the front office. Along with Nickeil Alexander-Walker, they will all have lucrative offers available to them from the Wolves and other teams.
It feels deflating. It feels like just as the Wolves managed to build momentum and have their best stretch of basketball in franchise history, the West became a juggernaut. The Thunder are going nowhere. The Denver Nuggets are still lurking. The San Antonio Spurs are up next.
It feels like the birthday party has ended, and we are left staring at the singular sad balloon in the rafters.
“We’re not bad anymore,” it reads, “we make the playoffs now.”
Just as it is with everything, expectations are the enemy of joy. When the Wolves made the playoffs as the sixth seed, the response was simply a sigh of relief for having escaped the play-in.
When they beat the Los Angeles Lakers, it was a middle finger to the fanbase that so much of Minnesota hates.
When they beat the Golden State Warriors, it was a victory lap over a pair of old enemies, trolls who had danced on the grave of the Wolves of the past only to be run over by the Wolves of the present.
Now, it is simply an empty sinking feeling for us all.
But here’s the question: should it?
I keep asking myself if I’d be happier if we were sitting through lotteries again, praying that late first-round picks like Jaden McDaniels could develop into players like Jaden McDaniels have. Would any of us be having more fun if Pandora’s Box had stayed closed?
I can’t promise that it would. This is one of the most miserable losses I’ve ever experienced, and that is an extraordinarily high bar. After all, these are the Minnesota Timberwolves.
This is a fanbase of people who lived through Kurt Rambis coaching 15-win seasons, only for David Kahn to sell the draft picks that could’ve improved that team in order to fire Rambis. This is a fanbase of people who waited 14 years to make the playoffs, just to run into the buzzsaw of the 2018 Houston Rockets and then have their whole basketball operations turn into a reality TV show that saw Jimmy Butler brand the entire organization as losers. This is an organization that burned their chance to truly build around Kevin Garnett by losing all of their notable picks by trying to cheat the CBA and sign Joe Smith to an illegal contract.
That’s what life as a Wolves fan was like.
I know we all feel bad right now. Maybe it’s good that we all care enough to feel bad. Basketball conversations can come another night. After all, conversations on a basketball site need not be reserved to the on-court antics of it all. Instead, let’s head to the comments and tell tales of Tanguy/Targuy Ngombo and Malcolm Lee. Let’s remember Ryan Gomes and JR Rider. Let’s laugh about Michael Beasley grabbing Anthony Tolliver’s knee or when a different Anthony spent a year with a different M. Beasley making great content and a ton of stupid choices.
The Wolves' fan experience of the past was misery highlighted by droplets of levity. The experience of today is on-court excellence with moments of agonizing letdown. I can’t say that one or the other is better, but I’m happy that it’s different.
Change is the only constant. Let’s celebrate where we are.
It was one heck of a season. We’ll be here next year. We’ll be here the year after that. The Canis team is locked in going forward, unlike our professional playing counterparts. We hope you’ll join us.
Fandom is meant to be shared. Through the good, joy is doubled. Through the bad, sadness is halved. Let’s share our sadness tonight.
In the words of the kindest man in Wolves history...
“Be happy. Change your face.”
Up Next
The season may have ended tonight, but the Timberwolves coverage never stops here at Canis Hoopus. Stay tuned for upcoming pieces, including season recaps, exit interviews, and offseason storylines. Thank you, Canis family, for an incredible season.