Trade Ant!? Five things I was terribly wrong about with the Wolves.
The Timberwolves lead their Western Conference semifinal series with Denver 2-0 heading into Friday's Game 3 at Target Center and they have become a fashionable pick to reach the NBA Finals.
How their roster was built is a testament to a lot of things, but of utmost importance is one quality that is often in short supply these days: patience.
Trades, firings and roster shakeups are exciting and make for good conversation. But too much roster churn can be a major detriment to a team's development.
As such, I want to revisit five instances in the past few years that I was wrong about the Timberwolves. Many of these points, which I talked about on Friday's Daily Delivery podcast, came as a result of my own impatience with the process.
*Trade Anthony Edwards: In March 2021, in the midst of an up-and-down rookie season for Edwards and with the Wolves sitting at 7-29 with the trade deadline a few weeks away, I mused that perhaps the Wolves should consider dealing Ant to the Hawks along with Naz Reid and perhaps Malik Beasley for John Collins and a couple other players.
Such a trade, which would have given the Wolves a primary three of Karl-Anthony Towns, D'Angelo Russell and Collins, would of course have been a disaster. Good thing then-Wolves boss Gersson Rosas wasn't as eager for a shortcut as I was.
*Trade Towns: At several points last offseason, I advocated that the Wolves should trade Towns. Instead, he became an All-Star this year and has been instrumental to the team's playoff success.
*Down on Rudy Gobert: I was hardly alone in this, but after initially backing the trade for Gobert, last season made me a skeptic. Gobert's play dipped, and the draft pick haul the Wolves gave up to get him was not only huge but also meant they couldn't make any similar blockbuster moves. They seemed boxed into their roster. As it turns out, that wasn't a bad thing now that Gobert has rebounded to be Defensive Player of the Year again.
*Let Connelly go? Connelly's first season in charge of the Wolves was bad enough that when he didn't commit to staying with the Wolves when a job in Washington opened up, I didn't think his leaving would be such a bad thing. This year has been a complete 180, or perhaps to Connelly just further evidence that the growing pains of last season and patience laid the groundwork for this year.
*Can't beat Phoenix: I really didn't think the Wolves would get out of the first round, as I was one of many people who bought the narrative that Phoenix was their worst matchup after going 0-3 against the Suns during the regular season. As it turns out, the Wolves found another gear (and then some) in sweeping the Suns — proving so dominant that the Suns fired Frank Vogel.
