Minnesota Timberwolves: The Wolves will outperform expectations

As it turns out, the Minnesota Timberwolves and their fans need not worry about a general overestimation of their capabilities in 2018-19.

Heading into the 2017-18 season, there was almost a collective sense of dread among Timberwolves fans that there was perhaps a bit too much hype surrounding their squad.

After all, this is the fanbase that suffered through the Kevin Love–Ricky Rubio–Rick Adelman era, when the team seemed to be on the precipice of a break-through almost annually. Ultimately, the best year with Adelman at the helm was a 40-win campaign in YEAR, Love was traded, and there was yet another rebuild.

But after adding a superstar in his prime to the roster last summer in Jimmy Butler to a rising star in Karl-Anthony Towns, plus bringing in solid starters Jeff Teague and Taj Gibson, there were certainly some experts who projected the Wolvse to make a huge jump in a tough Western Conference.

Of course, a jump from 31 wins in 2016-17 to 47 wins last year is nothing to sneeze at, although what ended up being a eighth-place finish in the West is really quite pedestrian.

Natural progression would tell you that a healthy Butler and an improving Towns, who was named to his first All-Star team last year, would catapult the Wolves from 47 wins to a total in the low-to-mid fifties. But the NBA offseason is a slog, and the first two months of the summer have led to a series of rumors that have cast a pall over the franchise.

Many of these rumors are questionable in nature, but this seems to be a classic case of ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’, and it sure seems as if everyone has bought in to the idea that even a young and improving team with an All-Star pairing can … get worse?

Indeed, the early returns from Vegas have the Wolves’ over/under set at 44.5 — three lower than their opening line last fall. And now, ESPN’s ‘experts’ have returned a verdict of 45 wins, two less than they finished with last year. (Of course, this same panel of experts has predicted that Butler will sign with the New York Knicks, so…)

Remember, Butler missed 21 games last year. That’s a solid quarter of the season, and the Wolves went just 10-11 in those contests.

And don’t miss that the Wolves have improved so far this offseason by adding Anthony Tolliver and James Nunnally, plus two promising rookies in Josh Okogie and Keita Bates-Diop while only losing Jamal Crawford — an upgrade even as a stand-alone move.

It’s notable to remind everyone that ESPN’s Kevin Pelton, whose analytics-based projections are generally more credible than his more … free-wheeling colleagues, projected the Wolves to notch 49.6 wins and land the No. 5 seed come playoff time.

We’ll spend some more time on this subject as we get closer to the season and make final win predictions. While it would be foolish to ignore the impact that real chemistry issues could have on a season, it’s hard to see this team regressing, given reasonable overall health.

At any rate, a lower bar should only help the Timberwolves get into nobody-believes-in-us mode. Here’s hoping it sparks a fire and starts some positive momentum at Mayo Clinic Square this fall.