Sometimes the person we ultimately become is as much about our mistakes as our successes. That could help to explain the Minnesota Timberwolves President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly’s decision to push so many chips into a high-stakes gamble that Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert will place the team into the heat of competing for an NBA Championship this year or for the foreseeable future.
We learn from our mistakes, much more than we learn from our successes. That is particularly true for Tim Connelly, who has developed an almost surreal reputation as an NBA Draft whisperer. But any success enjoyed by Connelly in past NBA Drafts has not overshadowed his first NBA Draft with the Denver Nuggets in 2013.
In that year, it was the Denver Nuggets, led by Tim Connelly, that opted to trade out of the 27th overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft. The Utah Jazz ended up making a selection in the draft with that pick and chose the French-born center Rudy Gobert.
This from Woj reminded me of this answer Tim Connelly gave me a few weeks ago when I interviewed him. https://t.co/2PFpliZWWj pic.twitter.com/eaSrodSBE0
— Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) July 1, 2022
That ‘gaffe’ remains with Connelly to this day.
Of course, the Nuggets did not lick their wounds whatsoever. In fact, you could say that this has a happy ending for Nuggets fans. How? Well, let’s just say that Tim Connelly made amends the following year, by drafting a pretty memorable center in the second round of the 2014 NBA Draft.
With the 41st pick in the 2014 #NBADraft, the Denver Nuggets select Nikola Jokic. pic.twitter.com/fS0wxVq89P
— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) June 27, 2014
And so, the NBA Draft is not cut and dry. Even NBA executives who are paid millions to make optimal selections in the draft must learn from their mistakes, forget the ones that ‘got away,’ and learn how to improve their selection process to ensure that they do not fall into the same pitfalls in consecutive years.
Nine years later, the NBA executives who traded out of the 27th pick of the 2013 NBA Draft just traded five players and four first-round picks to acquire the player selected in that draft with that pick. And with this trade, Minnesota Timberwolves President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly finally exorcises a ghost from his past that has haunted him ever since.