Minnesota Timberwolves: Tom Thibodeau is walking on thin ice

A lot was expected this past season after the Minnesota Timberwolves hired Tom Thibodeau. With even bigger expectations this season with all the newly acquired additions – Thib’s is under a lot of pressure to perform.

During the 2015-16′ season, Sam Mitchell was put under the tough task of leading this team after the terrible loss of Minnesota Timberwolves legend Flip Saunders. Mitchell delivered the Timberwolves to a 29-53 record. In the final two months of that season – Minnesota went 10-12.

Expectations became pretty high after seeing what Sam Mitchell could do with the team, especially the final stretch of the season. With a proven track record, Tom Thibodeau looked like the perfect guy for the job. He’s a defensive minded coach who has won a lot of games. In fact, before joining Minnesota, his overall record was 255-139. He’s never missed the playoffs until this past season.

The Wolves had three young budding stars in Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine. Many believed that Thib’s would flip the switch on these players and that everything would click. Their defense would become top 10, the offense would become even better, and their record would flip around and suddenly the Wolves’ would become a perennial playoff team. Sadly, that didn’t happen and the Wolves’ only saw a six game improvement (33-51).

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These big expectations came when they had three talented young players. Now, you replace LaVine, Kris Dunn, and a few non-existent bench players, and add veterans such as Jimmy Butler, Taj Gibson, Jeff Teague and Jamal Crawford – you find the team really coming together. Mix that in with another year of Wiggins and Towns and things are getting scary in Minnesota.

A lot of people have taken notice. ESPN came out with a real plus/minus to project wins for every NBA team. They ranked the Wolves’ fourth with a projected win total of 50.1 wins. Fans have taken notice, NBA analysts have, and many NBA players have. Recently Anthony Slater of the Athletic interviewed Kevin Durant, and he had this to say about the Wolves’:

"“You look at (Jeff) Teague all the way down to (Karl-Anthony) Towns, that’s an All-Star group. You have five All-Star caliber players on the court for Minnesota at the same time, great talented players at once. You have Teague, Jimmy Butler, Andrew Wiggins. Who’s the 4 over there? Gorgui Dieng?“Oh, yeah. Taj Gibson. Then Towns. So you got, what, four All-Star caliber players over there on one team. And why not? Why shouldn’t you have that? That’s what fans want to see. They don’t want to see all role players and a couple good guys. Nah, you want to see all the best players. That’s what Minnesota did. Thibs (coach Tom Thibodeau), you know, he’s got some cojones. I knew he was going to pull something off.”"

Pretty high praise coming from a former MVP and recent NBA champion.

With all this in flux, Minnesota is certainly being looked at with high hopes. With all this in mind, Minnesota has a lot of pressure to perform. Even Towns has talked about how high the expectations were. In an article by Jace Fredrick from the Pioneer Press reported some of KAT’s thoughts after the addition of Jimmy Butler.

"“I don’t think making the playoffs is reasonable now,” Towns said. “We’ve got to make it to the second round, third round. We’ve got to put ourselves in the finals.”"

If Thib’s isn’t able to bring this team to the playoffs – he’s about as good as gone. Why you may ask? While he’s had a proven track record, If you aren’t able to even get to the playoffs with this group of players – it really makes you question how good he really is. I don’t see this happening but crazier things have happened.

If he get’s out in the first round, I don’t necessarily know if that would result in him being fired – but it would put him on notice. The pressure is hot in Minnesota – with a talented team in the fold, it’s imperative that they come through and start winning some games.

Think back to the 2012-13′ Los Angeles Lakers when they had a core built around Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Dwight Howard. Nash was at the end of his career, but Bryant and Howard were still dominating the NBA. Many expected them to gel together and make a deep run in the playoffs. If you check this CBS article, three analysts had high expectations for the Lakers. From the three analysts, they pegged the Lakers to finish top three in the Western Conference.

There was a lot of problems along the way. Constant feuds between the players, especially between Howard and Bryant. Mike D’Antoni was the head coach at the time and found himself fired after three seasons. The Lakers “super-team” blew up and what was thought of a championship team ended up being a disappointment.

If Thib’s wants to stay in Minnesota he needs to become a consistent winner. Not the kind like Scott Brooks who could never seem to deliver a championship with Oklahoma City. He may have won games and made it to the finals one year, but, he could never win in the finals. But he needs to be your Gregg Popovich, Rick Carlisle or Erik Spoelstra.

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As long as he can win games and prove that he can win a championship, he will be here for a long time.

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