Minnesota Timberwolves: Revisiting the Wolves’ expected win total

The Minnesota Timberwolves have had a strange offseason, and the odd movement on their Las Vegas win total has reflected as much.

After a busy summer of 2017 saw the Minnesota Timberwolves land the likes of Jimmy Butler, Jeff Teague, Taj Gibson, and Jamal Crawford while jettisoning mainstays such as Ricky Rubio and Zach LaVine, the summer of 2018 was decidedly different.

There were exactly zero trades, and no free agent signings for more than part of the mid-level exception.

Outside of adding first-round pick Josh Okogie and second-rounder Keita Bates-Diop, the tweaks that Tom Thibodeau and company made to the roster were modest.

That said, there has been plenty of not-so-positive buzz surrounding the team.

From the rumors surrounding Jimmy Butler and Kyrie Irving in free agency next summer, to Butler’s alleged interest in joining the New York Knicks, to some of the more recent rumbling related to the apparently frayed relationship between Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns, things haven’t exactly been quiet.

Thibodeau has made it known that he is not concerned, but what other option does he have? We don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, there isn’t much else that he can do publicly and hopefully is facilitating a sit-down or doing something outside the public eye that will help grease the wheels of a reconciliation.

All of this, of course, is the backdrop to expectations for the 2018-19 regular season.

The Timberwolves won 47 games last year with Jimmy Butler missing 21 contests. The Western Conference likely only got more difficult this offseason with the addition of LeBron James to the Los Angeles Lakers, but outside of that, it’s tough to see why Las Vegas’ win total line opened at 44.5 for the Wolves.

Here’s part of the case for the over that I laid out a couple of weeks ago:

"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.…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."

As it stands today, things have only seemed more negative surrounding the team, but the Vegas line has inched upwards to 45 wins.

Here are some thoughts from The Action Network’s Matt Moore:

"This slight bump up for the Wolves is surprising, given the tone of their offseason.They made no tangible improvements, re-signed Derrick Rose and are probably signing at least one of Joakim Noah or Luol Deng, neither of whom have been rotation players the past two seasons.On top of all that, there’s talk of tension in both the front office and the locker room, and Jimmy Butler is a free agent next summer.So, yeah, kind of weird that there’s been a push for this team to go higher."

While fair to question why the line moved (my question was why it opened so low … nothing positive has happened in the last couple of weeks that should have caused it to move higher), the idea that “they made no tangible improvements” is a bit off-base.

While swapping out Nemanja Bjelica for Anthony Tolliver is likely to be a marginal improvement, simply losing Jamal Crawford should be tangible enough to swing a game or two in the Wolves’ favor; it would be a shock if Okogie or James Nunnally’s defense was worse than J-Crossover’s.

At any rate, it’s good to see the line move in the right direction. This should be a 50-win team, and here’s hoping that Towns and Butler and Thibs get their off-court stuff straightened out as soon as possible.