Minnesota Timberwolves: Observations from opening night

The Minnesota Timberwolves opened the regular season with a thrilling overtime victory against the Nets in our first look at this new era of Wolves basketball.

Opening the season with a road victory over a playoff team from last season was a tremendous way for the Minnesota Timberwolves to begin the Gersson Rosas and Ryan Saunders era. This win will instill confidence in the new system that Rosas and Saunders are trying to employ.

The highlights from this game included Karl-Anthony Towns being amazing and some key contributions from the bench.

We expect to see a great game from Towns night in and night out, but his outside shooting really made this performance stand out.

His extremely active defense was also encouraging as he racked up three steals and three blocks.

Although he didn’t help much in stopping Irving on the perimeter, KAT did get isolated on Irving late in the game and did a great job of contesting his shots. And even though he was in foul trouble late in the game, Towns provided good rim protection without fouling.

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The Nets only made 50% of their layup attempts showing the Wolves have improved their defense at the rim.

The next highlight is the bench. In recent history the Wolves haven’t had much depth, so having a bench that can extend a lead is huge for this team.

Jarrett Culver, Josh Okogie, Jake Layman, and Shabazz Napier all have the talent to be plugged into the starting lineup and that’s all thanks to Gersson Rosas and the front office for improving the depth of this team in the offseason..

Although he did show out in the overtime period, Andrew Wiggins has to be among the lowlights after missing every single one of his jump shots. The encouraging sign is Wiggins went 8-for-11 on his drives to the hoop with two clutch layups/floaters to win the game.

That potential to be the Wolves’ closer down the stretch is why he got that massive contract.

I think Saunders and the coaching staff can definitely work with Wiggins to improve his playmaking moving forward, and as he improves in this new offense we shouldn’t see many more games with zero assists.

If Wiggins finds his shot again, he could be the perimeter scorer that the Wolves need next to Towns.

The final takeaway from this game is that Minnesota may be in major trouble defending elite guards.

It looked like the defense is really focused on stopping shots at the rim which means that Jeff Teague was left on an island on the perimeter which resulted in 50 points for Kyrie Irving.

James Harden, Steph Curry, and Damian Lillard are all going to be salivating watching this game film later on so if Saunders continues to play that defensive strategy with this lineup.

Hopefully Saunders increases Josh Okogie’s minutes after shutting down Kyrie in the final seconds as he is clearly the best perimeter defender.

Jeff Teague didn’t look terrible sharing the floor with Napier, but a swap of Teague for Okogie in that lineup might be just what the doctor ordered.

Overall, the pros far outweighed the cons in Minnesota’s opening game as they begin this new era on the right foot.