The 11 biggest reasons to watch the Timberwolves this season

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Oct 21, 2016; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Minnesota Timberwolves guard Ricky Rubio (9) dribbles the ball as Charlotte Hornets guard Jeremy Lamb (3) defends during the third quarter at Target Center. The Timberwolves won 109-74. Mandatory Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports /

6. Ricky Rubio — as polarizing a player as Ricky can be, the dude makes a lot of highlight-level plays. I’m ready to get back to seeing those types of plays on a nightly basis once the season starts.

Many loyal fans think once Thibs spends more and more time with him he’ll realize how uniquely special he really is. It’s been harped on over and over again, but Ricky is a true defensive wizard and Thibs will fall in love with his effort and heart on that end. Will that be enough to overcome his mind-numbing lack of a jump-shot and, even more importantly, his putrid FG percentage at the rim?

Who knows. And for the first time ever, the Wolves have a full-time shooting coach on staff. Perhaps that will help, along with the encouraging fact that Ricky shot better around the rim during the second half last year. In any case, he’s still a very entertaining player and could provide an interesting sub-plot as possible trade bait all season. Which leads me to my next reason to follow the team this year…

7. Trade Speculation. Even if you sleep on a Ricky Rubio pillow every night because you’re just dedicated like that, you’ll still be enamored with all the speculation surrounding this team throughout the season.

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Why? Because for the first time in a long time (possibly ever) the team has real assets and may be a legitimate buyer at the trade deadline. Think about the theme of most Wolves transactions over the last decade: ‘star player wants out’, ‘aging veteran wants to be traded to playoff team’, ‘team needs to move on from failed draft pick’. Not this year baby! The Wolves have the assets to bring in a good, possibly great player.

And not only that, hopefully as the team fulfills some of it’s promise and gains respect league wide it will start gaining interest from role fulfilling veterans looking to find a winning organization. This is the benefit of a good rep in the NBA: instead of buying out or trading players for a bag of skittles (a la Kevin Martin & Mo Williams over the past couple of years) you get to be the team that gets those types of players on the cheap. As the roster thins with injury and Thibs’s notoriously tight rotations it might be a great boon to the team if they’re fighting for playoff positioning. In any case, it’ll be fun to follow all the trade speculation all year because it’s finally time for the Wolves to be on the buyer side of a mid-season trade.

8. Jim Peterson (aka Jimmy Pete!) & Dave Benz. Simply put, the Timberwolves have one of the best TV crews in the league. As Zach Lowe stated in his 2015 League Pass Rankings (a ranking of all the NBA teams in watchability from 1-30):

"If you crave smart commentary, you can’t do any better than Dave Benz and Jim Petersen. Whenever I hear Petersen toss out a SportVU stat or discuss some nugget he learned watching film the night before, I feel sad that they are not broadcasting for a larger audience."

Those are very kind words from someone who probably spends more time watching local broadcasts of games than any other journalist. As someone who takes full advantage of the free League Pass in the first week of the season, I can tell you than most crews don’t even come close to the Wolves’. The blatant homerism of most crews is pretty hilarious, and there is very little of that with Jimmy Pete and Dave Benz.

Dave provides a smooth broadcast with little bias, and definitely hasn’t sugar coated the poor performances over the years. Jim is constantly looking for new statistical nuggets to drop during games and I, for one, appreciate his dedication to his craft. The dude even assistant coaches the Lynx in the offseason!