Timberwolves Roundup: Pelton on Wolves, more Wiggins and Irving
By Ben Beecken
As August begins, we’re finally about ready to begin reviewing the NBA off-season. ESPN’s Kevin Pelton gives his two cents on the Timberwolves, and an ESPN podcast discussed Andrew Wiggins and Kyrie Irving.
There’s no question that the 2017-18 version of the Timberwolves will be far better than
last year’s
any Wolves team since 2004. But just how good will this team be?
It’s admittedly really early to be having this discussion; the Wolves’ roster isn’t even quite full yet, and August has barely begun. The regular season is more than 10 weeks away, and players won’t begin to report for media day and training camps for another six-plus weeks.
But ESPN Kevin Pelton has made us do it by posting his Western Conference grades already, and that means we need to cover it.
Once again, Pelton’s piece is an ESPN Insider article, so we won’t regurgitate the text in it’s entirety here. But he did give the Timberwolves an ‘A’, outpaced only by a three-way tie at an ‘A+’ grade for the Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Golden State Warriors. The only other team to receive a solid ‘A’ was the Dallas Mavericks — yes, for doing nothing and not hamstringing their cap space.
Pelton praises the Wolves acquisition of Jimmy Butler and subbing Jeff Teague for Ricky Rubio for roster fit reasons while picking up a first-round pick. He was less complimentary about the Taj Gibson and Jamal Crawford signings, however, noting that acquiring a ‘three-and-D’ player would have been the better move. (You won’t find a disagreement about that assertion here.)
The Rockets acquired Chris Paul and added defensive specialists P.J. Tucker and Luc Mbah a Moute to the bench. That was an easy ‘A+’. The Thunder grabbed Paul George for what is likely to be a one-year rental, added Patrick Patterson on a bargain deal, and re-signed Andre Roberson. And the Warriors re-signed Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, and Shaun Livingston while adding Omri Casspi and Nick Young.
The Denver Nuggets, who are likely only a notch below the Timberwolves, added Paul Millsap to complement Nikola Jokic and create an interesting divisional match-up for Minnesota.
At any rate, the grades seemed fair, and the Wolves deserve their solid ‘A’. The way that Tom Thibodeau fills out the end of his bench matters, but the majority of the work has been done.
Also on Tuesday, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst posted his The Basketball Analogy podcast with a number of co-hosts from around the basketball world. They discussed a number of topics — not all NBA related — but briefly touched on the Andrew Wiggins-Kyrie Irving rumors.
The comments centered around Wolves owner Glen Taylor’s comments to Sid Hartman (yes, there’s some Hartman discussion as well) regarding giving Wiggins a max contract, thereby shrinking any leverage that the organization held. The summation from the podcast crew is essentially that the Wolves will now be giving Wiggins the max, and they therefore cannot land Irving if they are extending Wiggins.
This is a fair assumption, although everything we’ve heard is that the Timberwolves are trying their best to find a way to land Irving without including Wiggins. It’s a pie-in-the-sky idea, of course, but let’s see if Thibs can somehow figure it out.
Next: Jeff Teague Is Already The Forgotten Man For The Wolves
At this point, it’s seeming less and less likely that the Wolves land Irving, unless there’s a change of heart in the front office prior to pen being put to paper on the Wiggins extension.