Minnesota Timberwolves: Is this the most disappointing Wolves start ever?

The Minnesota Timberwolves have had a disappointing start to the 2020-21 season, but can it be called the worst start to a season in franchise history?

Multiple times already this season, it’s felt as though the Timberwolves have hit rock bottom, which is a low bar for one of the most beguiled franchises in professional sports.

Murphy’s Law definitely applies to this group; anything that can go wrong will go wrong. We all know the story.

The disappointment of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ season so far

The Wolves had a decent amount of hype this offseason with a healthy Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell leading the way while first-overall draft pick Anthony Edwards, Malik Beasley, and fan-favorite Ricky Rubio help propel this young and talented team into playoff contention.

After two solid wins to start the year, the wheels began to fall off quickly in Minnesota. Towns went down with a wrist injury, and just two games into his return tested positive for COVID-19. All told, he has missed 17 of the team’s first 21 games.

The injury bug has hit the rest of the team as well. Only Beasley and Edwards have played in every game to start the season.

There have been blowouts, blown fourth-quarter leads, and a lot of misery for basketball fans in the Twin Cities. At 5-16, the Wolves have the third-worst record in the league and the worst point differential (-9), a full two points worse than the No. 29 team. A once-promising season is now in tatters and has fans across the state wondering if this is the worst start to a season in Timberwolves franchise history.

The easy answer to that question is, ‘no.’ In fact, 5-16 is only tied for the seventh-worst start in franchise history.

Ranking this season alongside past Minnesota Timberwolves ineptitude

Minnesota has started 3-17 four times (1991-92, 1994-95, 2007-08, and 2009-10) in 32 seasons. They’ve also started 4-16 (2008-09 and 2014-15) twice. Prior to Wednesday loss to San Antonio, this was the fourth 5-15 start in franchise history, joining the 1989-90, 1992-93, and 2010-11 campaigns.

A start this terrible no doubt has plenty of factors that play into matters: injuries, coaching, expectations, margin of victory, and blown leads can account for a bad record and decide if you start the season on the right foot or not.

So, how do we evaluate 2020-21 in the context of this franchise’s historical ineptitude?

Let’s go ahead and take out any season before 1995 — and not just because it’s all pre-KG, but simply because the franchise was so new. Expansion franchises have a hard time gaining traction in the league and need 5 to 10 years to bring in the right players and coaches in order to actually compete in the NBA. It’s unfair to judge those seasons the same way as future years because they don’t have a full assortment of assets that an established franchise does.

Let’s look at the six teams we still have left in the running for the worst 20-game start to a season in franchise history.

All-Star caliber talent

We skip all the way through the KG years (because they were actually successful) to the season after he was traded in the summer of 2007.

Of the six teams, only three employed a player who had previously made an All-Star team in their career. In 2007-08 three-time All-Star Antoine Walker suited up for 46 games in Minnesota in what was his final season in the league. He played alongside 34-year-old one-time All-Star Theo Ratliff, who only played in six of the team’s first 20 games.

A few years later, Kevin Love made his first All-Star team during the 2010-11 season.

One-time All-Star Mo Williams played 41 games for the Wolves in 2014-15. This year, the Wolves have two All-Stars in Towns (two-time) and Russell (one-time).

In terms of talent, let’s eliminate the 2007-08 team for a few reasons. First, the team and fans were still coping with the Garnett trade, so expectations were not incredibly high. Secondly, the players they got in return for KG (Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes, Sebastian Telfair, Gerald Green, and Ratliff) were all 25-years-old or younger except for Ratliff and were paired with rookie Corey Brewer and second-year guard Randy Foye.

This young core was not expected to compete right away and the hope was that they would grow into a competent team in the next few years.

Injuries and other factors

The next factor to look at is injuries. Obviously, an injury to one of your team’s best players is going to affect the outcome of games.

We know this season has been much worse than it should be due to KAT’s injuries. Towns has only played in four of 21 games to start the year, and plenty of other players have sat out a handful of contests. Josh Okogie sat out six games with a hamstring injury, Juan Hernangomez has missed the last 10 games due to COVID-19 health and safety protocols, Russell has missed three games, and Jarrett Culver is currently in the midst of a five-game absence and counting.

In 2009-10 Kevin Love missed the first 18 games of the season with a hand injury, and in 2014 the Wolves lost leading scorer Kevin Martin for 11 of the first 20 games, plus Rubio only dressed in five games in that span. Let’s eliminate those three teams who were decimated by injuries and could never truly see how they stacked up against the rest of the league.

That leaves us with two teams left vying for the crown of the worst 20-game start in Wolves history, the 2008-09 team and the 2010-11 squad.

Weighing preseason expectations

Statistically, things are fairly close between the two. The 2010 team had a slightly worse point differential than 2008 (-7.0 to -6.1, respectively). The Wolves lost four of their first 20 games in 2010 by 20 or more points as opposed to only two such losses in 2008.

The tie-breaker here is the previous offseason. In 2008 the Wolves drafted O.J. Mayo, whom they wisely swapped for Kevin Love. Things seemed to be looking up for the franchise. The 2010 offseason went a bit differently. Minnesota drafted Wes Johnson fourth overall, a pick that would turn into a huge bust just two years later.

David Kahn then traded away Al Jefferson and added Michael Beasley to the team in separate deals. The worst part came when Kevin Love wanted a five-year designated player contract and got into an altercation with Kahn, and ultimately signing a four-year deal which began the rift between Love and the team.

That offseason drama played a huge part in the Timberwolves’ lackadaisical start in 2010 and pushed that team over the edge as the worst start in franchise history. Mix in higher-than-usual expectations with the emergence of Kevin Love and the addition of Beasley and the 2010-11 squad took disappointment to another level.

Ten years later, while Timberwolves fans are looking at another bottom-feeding team with little hope of any change, just remember that while this has been a disappointing season so far, it by no means is the worst squad that Minnesota basketball fans have ever seen.