What if the Minnesota Timberwolves traded for Allen Iverson in 2006?

Would the Minnesota Timberwolves have made the playoffs with Allen Iverson?

Yes, the Wolves would have almost certainly been a playoff team in 2006-07 with Iverson in the fold.

When Iverson was traded, the Wolves were sitting at 10-11 in head coach Dwane Casey’s second season at the helm. Following a disappointing 33-49 season the year prior, Casey was fired early in 2007 with the Wolves sitting at 20-20.

The dismissal was premature, of course; the Wolves wouldn’t sniff a .500 record again until finishing the 2013-14 season with a 40-42 record under Rick Adelman.

If the Wolves had landed Iverson, they would have surely enjoyed a midseason bump. Making the playoffs would have been tough, as the No. 8 seed finished with 42 wins, and it’s difficult to see Iverson making a 10-win difference over the course of two-thirds of a season at that stage in his career.

But at the very least, the Wolves would have been in the playoff conversation down the stretch, and Casey likely would not have been fired — at least not in the middle of the season.

Iverson still had two years left on his deal, and the Wolves would not have traded Garnett in the summer of 2007 and instead would have made another run or two at a championship.

It’s unlikely they would have achieved that goal, of course, with a 31-year-old Iverson still an effective scorer but not anywhere near the level he was at when he dragged the 2000-01 Sixers to the Finals six years prior.

Instead, the Wolves would have been a playoff team in 2007 and 2008, finding themselves eliminated in the first or second round. It’s anyone’s guess what might have happened to Iverson and Garnett in free agency in 2008, but at least we wouldn’t have been sitting here in 2021 with the Wolves making the playoffs exactly one time in the past 17 seasons.