The Minnesota Timberwolves have an interesting season ahead of them. In a season with play-in game expectations, looking at their place in the Western Conference is an interesting experiment.
The Minnesota Timberwolves are going to have stiff competition in the Western Conference, assuming they are able to improve upon the disaster that was last season (several major injuries, a coaching change mid-season, all of which taking place during a global pandemic and ownership rumors).
To start, the bottom of the Western Conference is, well it’s pretty weak. The worst two teasm this past season in the West were the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets. The Rockets were just downright bad, not having much going for them outside of Christian Wood. This offseason, they added 2nd-overall pick Jalen Green (among other draft picks) and Daniel Theis. They will likely still be awful. OKC, on the other hand, had some promise towards the beginning of last season, but fell short after Shai Gilgeous-Alexander became hurt and Al Horford was benched for not-so-subtle tanking purposes. The Timberwolves should be firmly better than these two teams.
After that, there is a tier of 4-5 teams, one that the Timberwolves should fit right into: Sacramento Kings, Memphis Grizzlies, San Antonio Spurs, and New Orleans Pelicans.
To be frank, the Timberwolves have to be better than three of those teams if they would like to make a play-in game. The Pelicans got better this offseason (lost Lonzo Ball, but added Devonte’ Graham, Jonas Valanciunas, and Tomas Satoransky), but the San Antonio Spurs got worse after losing DeMar DeRozan. The Grizzlies, on the other hand, are going to be reliant on their player development this season after trading away their franchise center and adding Ziaire Williams through the draft. The Kings are, once again, treading water. They added Davion Mitchell and didn’t really lose any core pieces.
That leaves the Timberwolves. While the team didn’t get much better in terms of acquiring talent, they should be significantly better off than last season due to having a fully heathy roster (at least for the time being) as well as their head coach Chris Finch having a full offseason to work with the team and implement his general game plan. The Timberwolves should be competitive, and the expectation should be for them to fight for a playoff (and play-in) slot in the Western Conference.