Early season ponderings: Enjoying the journey
By Josh Bungum
The Minnesota Timberwolves season has gotten off to an engaging start. Why should we relish the process this team will go through this season?
Other than the complete duds against the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons, watching the early season Minnesota Timberwolves tilts against high-level competition and admiring the nuances of how this newly assembled roster goes about dissecting its opponents, one continuous thought is sure to be going through a majority of Timberwolves’ fans minds: so this is what it feels like.
‘It’ is the feeling of relevant NBA basketball. ‘It’ is the ability to have a lead in the second half and not assume an inescapable team-wide collapse. ‘It’ is being a fan of a franchise whose significance has reached an unprecedented level in an NBA climate that may be at its peak popularity in its long history.
As the Wolves slugged it out with another Western Conference heavyweight on Sunday night in Oklahoma City, every Russell Westbrook fourth quarter contested 3 that went in, which used to seem like a dagger into the hopes of a Minnesota victory, seemed different. Instead of cringing and waiting for a small run to turn into an avalanche of futility on the Wolves end, the calming influence of Jimmy Butler combined with the progression of maturity in Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins made it seem as though the storm would pass much quicker than we as Wolves fans are used to.
Towns answered the Thunder’s runs with a smooth 3-pointer. Wiggins responded to a
made basket with a whirling-dervish passed multiple OKC players into the lane and complete a difficult layup. Butler came back and levelheadedly found open teammates, setting them up for easy buckets.
That, fellow Wolves faithful, is progress.
What has changed?
It doesn’t take a basketball expert to examine the first couple of Timberwolves’ victories and take note that these triumphs almost certainly would have turned into crushing defeats last season. The combination of playoff-caliber opponents and subpar crunch time execution on both ends of the floor that plagued the Wolves all of last season were prominently absent in these contests.
Sometimes the term ‘veteran leadership’ can be so pounded into the heads of NBA readers that its cliché-ness falls unsurprisingly on deaf ears. However, it’s effectiveness, while unoriginal, is one of the most genuine factors in determining how a basketball game is won.
In a game that is comprised of some of the world’s top athletes, who all have implausible collections of talent, games sometimes come down to tremendously subtle moments that can be hidden to the eyes of many. The casual fan sees the go-ahead three-pointer by Jamal Crawford in the waning seconds as the reason for the win, while the basketball guru sees the gritty defensive rebound on the previous possession or the solid screen that allowed for that decisive shot to be made as the cause for the final success.
Those are the moments that the new Wolves veterans will provide this season. For the Timberwolves this season, expect to see many more of these important subtleties to victory than we as fans are accustomed to.
Ups and downs
For every NBA team, no matter how dominant or unskilled they may be, there are ebbs and flows throughout the season where at times they project hope, and other times they breed frustration.
Last night’s debacle against a thinly talented and shorthanded Indiana Pacers team is an exact example of one of these maddening moments.
That is just part of the expedition of being a passionate NBA fan. On some nights, such as Sunday, your team will provide a moment that can produce excitement levels that make introverts squirm. On others, they will deliver repeated vexing moments that will test your patience in restraining yourself from throwing various objects at your television screen.
There are sure to be many more of these wearisome stretches over the course of this current season. The grueling 82-game schedule plays host to a variety of difficult periods where the blend of travel and limited rest take a toll on a team. Sickness from star players (pretty please get well soon, Jimmy Butler), various injuries and off nights will unavoidably happen. The key is making sure these nights are more rarities than commonalities.
Enjoying the excursion.
If you have ever been on a long road trip to a final vacation spot, you will understand that the drive is never the most enjoyable aspect of the trip.
It is, however, many times the most memorable part of it.
Sleeping in extraordinarily uncomfortable positions and becoming remarkably irritated with your co-travelers is intermingled with beautiful new landscapes in unfamiliar locations and the opportunity to make fresh memories. The pain of the voyage creates experiences that are at times unpleasant, but many times are the lasting moments that you take from the journey. The ups and downs in the trip make the final destination so much more gratifying to reach.
This is also how we must treat a long NBA season with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The collection of new talent will provide plenty of these annoying and frustrating moments where fans can question why they spend so much time cheering for a team who seems at times to care as much about defensive effort as Tom Thibodeau cares about his vocal chords (that is to say, absolutely zero care). There will also be peaks where this team shows an ability to mesh the vast amount of talent it possesses into cohesive basketball on both ends of the court and delivers elation-filled moments.
The over-arching theme here is this: enjoy the journey that the Timberwolves are going on throughout this season. Delight in the little moments like an off-ball Andrew Wiggins’ cut to the basket for a score or an instinctive Jimmy Butler jump into a passing lane for a steal. Relish the times that the Wolves stave off an opponent’s late run and hold onto a victory, and become peeved when the team takes a step backward from the two paces forward they just seemed to make progress on.
Next: Minnesota Timberwolves: 4 keys to the fourth quarter
Because in the end, if the Timberwolves reach the heights of their massive potential, those will be the moments that make all of the heartache and jubilation worth it.