Wolves look ahead while knowing their title aspirations ride on Edwards

When it comes to the NBA it is dependably central to remember how little we know and how much can change over the curriculum of a season A year ago at this time nobody knew that Luka Doncic would be on the Lakers Jimmy Butler would join the Warriors and that a Timberwolves club with Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo instead of Karl-Anthony Towns would beat them both on their way to reprising their appearance in the Western Conference Finals A year ago the Celtics were a budding dynasty In the current era after the modern torn Achilles that is likely to sideline star Jason Tatum for greater part of next season plus the onerous penalties the NBA s new collective bargaining agreement imposes on teams that chronically spend well beyond the salary cap the future of the Celtics and their core personnel is very much uncertain The already star-studded Phoenix Suns and Philadelphia ers further beefed up their rosters with complementary pieces and got worse with neither organization even making it to the play-in tournament Meanwhile coaches Mike Malone in Denver and Taylor Jenkins in Memphis were both fired just weeks before their teams would compete in the playoffs And the Houston Rockets and Detroit Pistons came out of nowhere to finish second in the West and fifth in the East respectively This month s NBA Finals matches the Oklahoma City Thunder led by -year old Shai Gilgeous-Alexander against the Indiana Pacers led by -year old Tyrese Haliburton Regardless of who wins that unit will be the seventh different franchise in the past seven seasons to be crowned the champion All of this is to say that using the just now concluded - Timberwolves season as a pivot point toward assessing what might happen to the band in - is fraught with the myopia of recency bias and helplessly ignorant of whatever random happenstances will combine to foster the inevitable avalanche of change that will alter the landscape next season But there was a moment during Tim Connelly s season-closing question-and-answer session with the media early Monday afternoon that provided rare clarity For two years in a row now Connelly the Wolves president of basketball operations has cited the injurious impact of turnovers in his unit s on-court performances When I pointed this out and petitioned what could be done to reduce turnovers by the Wolves offense his response laid bare his top priority for club management As I explained last year various of it is when you are that reliant on a -year-old now -year-old guy to have the ball all the time there should be several expectations of turnovers And that s just it sounds like a cop-out answer but that s just wisdom and seeing more basketball So I think chosen of it will come it s natural maturation specifically of Ant Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels Hearing that I followed up by asking Connelly if he exclusively rides with Ant while he matures or brings in a younger version of playmaking point guard Mike Conley to help him with the load We re either going to win or lose with Ant It doesn t mean we re not invariably trying to look for complementary skill sets among players who can help him reach what we think he can be but we re either going to win a championship or not get there on the back of Anthony And the greatest thing is he embraces that responsibility He is such a positive teammate Obviously supremely talented but I think there is nobody in the league that we could choose who is more ready for that level of responsibility Edwards embraces starring role Ignoring the supremacy of Ant in the crew s planning is like fixating on the trimmings to the tree rather than the tree itself It is not wasted force the nuances of how the skills ages and temperaments of the rest of the roster mesh with and motivate Ant s ascendance are ultimately crucial to the enterprise But if you are looking for the bankable constant square one on what Connelly and coach Chris Finch hope the - Timberwolves can become it starts with Ant Certainly it has been Ant or bust ever since Connelly arrived The POBO has announced that a important impetus for swinging the monumental deal that brought Rudy Gobert to Minnesota mere months after he was hired was to raise the floor on the band s foreseen enough to get Ant valuable playoff experience at a very young age Mission accomplished Although just Ant s playoff immersion encompasses four of his five NBA seasons all of them with Finch as the head coach the last three with Connelly assembling the surrounding personnel First-round exits marked his initial two playoff appearances but the next two have been forays into the conference finals Ant s playoff games now ranks second to only Kevin Garnett s in Timberwolves history The next step is mixing patience and proactivity as Ant goes through the maturation process from spectacular novice to burgeoning company leader to acknowledged superstar to prospective champion Patience in professional sports is largely non-existent Organizations that can show patience tend to have a really high level of success Connelly revealed on Monday But patience shouldn t lead to jeopardy aversion The current NBA Finals backs this up Both the Thunder and the Pacers have five members of their core rotation that have been together at least three seasons But the Thunder strengthened an already formidable defense this past offseason by trading starting point guard Josh Giddey for gritty wing-stopper Alex Caruso and signing free agent center Isaiah Hartenstein And after landing Haliburton for All Star center Damantas Sabonis at the February trading deadline the Pacers cemented the core by trading three players and three picks to Toronto for forward Pascal Siakam in January Trading for Gobert and trading away KAT within two years of each other solidified Connelly s reputation for vulnerability just as his acquisition of forward Aaron Gordon to supplement budding MVP Nikola Jokic when he ran the Denver Nuggets proved to be a well-calculated gamble The through-line for all those deals was enriching the path forward for the resident superstar as a means of securing a sustainable competitive future for the franchise Gobert ensured that Ant s early maturation happened as a perpetual winner The KAT agreement safeguarded against the Wolves being stuck in salary-cap hell during the prime of Ant s career That is the long view that shouldn t be obscured by back-to-back trips to the conference finals in years and of Ant s life Lebron James and Michael Jordan didn t win a ring until they were for Steph Curry it was Notable exceptions as early champions Magic Johnson at Kobe Bryant at Tim Duncan at came when they were co-stars alongside household names and nicknames like Kareem Shaq and The Admiral respectively on already flourishing franchises Ant s current five-year contract runs out in - a minimal months before his th birthday Not coincidentally that makes him two years younger than Naz Reid a year younger than Jaden McDaniels and Terrence Shannon Jr and the same age as Jaylen Clark Naz and McDaniels have been Ant s teammates his entire career Shannon and Clark are capable bench players who know their roles and are remarkably reliable given their scant NBA experience Predicting what Connelly will do is silly as he has already proven masterful at thinking outside the box the Gobert and KAT trades came out of the blue and landing the then-teenaged point guard Rob Dillingham in last year s draft for the Wolves first-rounder in was an unprecedented swap of an asset six years in the future that wasn t part of a larger package of players What s next for Randle A key decision involves Randle who is majority of likely to forsake his athlete option for million next season in exchange for a lengthier deal And Naz almost certainly will opt out of the million he could be paid next season Both players hold enormous value Randle for current upside and versatility Naz for his Ant-friendly style and mutual timeline but are precisely the type of players who are penalized by the NBA s new collective bargaining agreement which limits being paid their full worth unless they sign with unsuccessful teams with sufficient salary cap space or can work several financial jiu jitsu with Connelly and another front office The Wolves also have the th and st picks in the draft on June th The th pick is a dividend of the KAT agreement the st a product of the Mike Conley for D Angelo Russell deal which has better financial flexibility because it falls just outside the picks in the first round Last but hardly least Nickeil Alexander-Walker is now an unrestricted free agent after the expiration of his bargain contract with the Wolves this past season He was a reliable performer an ace at battling through screens for on-ball pressure on defense and an absolute gem in the locker room and with the media But the consensus is that he is core rotation sportsman the majority replaceable by the likes of Clark or Shannon and Connelly has to cut somewhere to avoid the harsh penalties meted to teams in the dreaded second apron of spending beyond the luxury tax threshold From the outside looking in the Timberwolves greatest need is a more comprehensive grasp of both poise and purpose During Finch s tenure they have had chronic bouts of poor execution due to careless decisions insufficient hustle and a lack of attention to detail They have exploited Finch s preference for spontaneity over structure and can be too quick to congratulate themselves on a job mostly well-done At the root of these problems and the solutions to them is Ant s status on the maturity spectrum It is genuinely remarkable and a tribute to Connelly Finch and Ant himself that these growing pains have not deterred the Wolves from reaching the conference finals two years running It speaks to the faith the organization has in the upside to this process The next three months from now through the draft and the free agency process that officially begins July and into the start of preseason in early October will be fascinating for the roster-building decisions made by the ownership front office and coaching staff of the Wolves Whatever happens however you will be smarter if you look at it through the prism of Connelly s words on Monday We re either going to win or lose with Ant Louder for the people in back It doesn t mean we re not invariably trying to look for complementary skill sets who can help him reach what we think he can be but we re either going to win a championship or not get there on the back of Anthony The post Wolves look ahead while knowing their title aspirations ride on Edwards appeared first on MinnPost