Timberwolves’ 2016-17 Eulogy
October 26th, 2016- April 12th, 2017, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ season has passed. Please join us in mourning the loss of another Timberwolves’ season.
The Minnesota Timberwolves are our favorite team.
Before the season started, they provided us with hope and encouragement, inspiring us to be the best fans possible. They made us long more than ever for a winning season.
Behind two budding stars, Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, the season was a book still waiting to be written. The opportunities appeared endless.
The Minnesota Timberwolves also had a third youngster in Zach LaVine.
LaVine could jump through the roof and outrun a gazelle. His athleticism was a sight to behold all across the league.
When you combined the three up and comers with a new head coach, it gave all of us butterflies in our stomachs. We were giddy with joy about what the season would behold.
Tom Thibodeau brought promise of a defense so fierce it would make the Golden State Warriors shiver with fear in our shadow. A defense the likes of which Minnesota has never seen before.
Thibodeau does, after all, have a history of being a no-nonsense coach who demanded equal effort on both sides of the floor.
All of the promise the offseason brought soon evaporated when the games began to count. The Minnesota Timberwolves got off to a 6-18 start a fourth of the way through the season.
With the fire in their belly already waning, the Wolves dug themselves a hole they were never able to climb out of.
Even with time proving that true, it didn’t stop them from trying. You see, Timberwolves, being a ferocious beast, began to claw their way back up. They wouldn’t allow a slow start to keep them down the whole winter.
In January, the Wolves came clawing back, winning 8 of their last 11 games of the month. The hope Minnesota gave us before the season came roaring back.
It wasn’t for long though. Tragedy soon struck when Zach LaVine tore his ACL on February 3rd.
Right when Timberwolves’ fans were beginning to see a ray of light, the clouds soon covered the sunshine and it began to poor.
The Timberwolves would make one final push after the All-Star break but it fell on deaf ears across the league.
The young Wolves soon became discouraged and restarted the digging of their hole they created at the beginning of the season, showing no signs of life.
In the end, we learned that the 2016-17 Minnesota Timberwolves were a team you could never really depend on. They wavered at every step of the way and never followed through on the promise they showed in the offseason.
The blossoming hope fans felt at the beginning of the season never transpired. Instead, we had to once again settle for sniffing the playoffs from afar.
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From the fans to you, Minnesota Timberwolves. This isn’t a goodbye, it’s a see you later.