Minnesota Timberwolves Thoughts: Overreacting is dangerous

Over the course of this early season stretch, the Minnesota Timberwolves have already proven that overreacting to games is a needless endeavor.

In years past, every short stretch of futility by the Timberwolves felt like the beginning of a sky dive without a parachute. Any sort of little setback would snowball into a barrage of both mental and physical mistakes that would extend for consecutive games, and sometimes consecutive weeks, at a time. Loudly issuing creative profanities at your television while your pet looks at you in utter fear has become a nightly tradition during Timberwolves seasons for way too long.

These experiences have led us to become super-sensitive as fans at the first sign of poor basketball as we aren’t quite sure how to process the fact that maybe, just maybe, this year’s team is different.

The Wolves bounced back from consecutive losses to the Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns with a convincing victory in Utah, marking the second time this season they have righted the ship after an ugly two-game stretch that caused their tortured fan base to go into a frenzy. Although they struggled again in the fourth quarter (something that hopefully is just an anomaly), they looked the part of a playoff caliber team after beating a Jazz squad in a way that should be expected without defensive stalwart Rudy Gobert. All is right again in Timberwolves land, and hopefully it taught us all a lesson.

Why the paranoia?

After every loss there are a plethora of knee-jerk hot-takes on various social media platforms that are often times irrational and emotionally driven. These opinions are only amplified by being in the midst of a transition from the low expectations that come with the ‘up-and-coming’ label to a team that is expected to be mentioned in the league’s upper tier.

Many times these rash opinions are moderately extinguished by intelligent writers and media members as they point out the grueling nature of an NBA schedule and the inevitability of better days to come. Almost invariably, fans come back from their brief panic to realize that there are many games left to make up for the irritation they endured from one frustrating game. It’s a constant cycle that every fan goes through, but the sequence for Timberwolves’ fans is likely much more intense due to the years of mental mutilation that we’ve had to withstand.

We as fans tend to judge our teams with a short-term mindset, understandably trying to funnel our emotions on to something that is relevant in the present moment. Statements like “Andrew Wiggins does nothing but score” and “Towns’ defense is absolutely horrendous” are things that are easy to point to when the Wolves have a difficult stretch of games. But the truth is that these things don’t get fixed in a single contest or even brief stretches of games, rather over the course of weeks and months during an entire season.

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We love to analyze by using short time frames, but perhaps the more accurate way to judge is by examining the aggregate.

A change has happened.

This year’s Timberwolves squad is not the same sort of crew that we’ve grown accustomed to as Minnesota fans. Although he is still trying to find his footing and get comfortable, Jimmy Butler is way too good of a player to allow losing streaks to turn into a norm. Add in fellow veteran warrior Taj Gibson, and the trifecta of him, Butler, and Tom Thibodeau do not seem likely to allow short stretches of dullness to turn into a regular occurrence.

When thinking logically, all of the ebbs and flows throughout a season end up finding their mean through the law of averages, with talent typically being the reliable variable of where teams finish in the final standings. Looking at a roster composed of Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, and the aforementioned Butler is enough to buoy this team into a respectable seed in the playoffs, regardless of how nervous we become as to when this team will show true signs of gelling on both ends of the court.

It has already been evident this season that this squad has a lot of work to do, specifically on defensive rotations and learning the intricacies of Thibodeau’s advanced playbook. Team cohesion has seemed to lag behind where some projected it to be, even at this early stage of the year. The good news is there have been flashes in nearly every game that forecast better things to come, providing hope that people who follow the Timberwolves are not used to receiving.

Moving forward.

We are only about 16 percent through the NBA season right now. We can’t truly start putting harsh criticism on this team until they reach the Andre Roberson free throw percentage point of the season (which sits at a hefty 37.5 percent as of this writing….LOL). It is still well too early to overreact to bad losses – which there have been plenty of already.

The seemingly indefinite defensive struggles for the Timberwolves that can’t seem to be fixed regardless of who is on the floor or the coaching box are enough to baffle even the most level-headed fans. However, there is too much prior evidence to suggest that this is a sustainable trend. The Wolves will likely burrow up to at least the middle of the pack in defensive efficiency once the kinks get worked out and the former Bulls educate their pupils.

Just remember, it’s been so long since we’ve tasted relevance that our minds are not conditioned for the stamina needed to outdo the mental exhaustion that comes with games actually mattering.

Next: The Timberwolves are consistently inconsistent

Don’t let this mental exhaustion break you. Embrace it and realize that it’s an overwhelmingly positive thing to actually have something to cheer for with something on the line. Try not to overreact, but instead, just react.

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