This Timberwolves player deserves a hero’s welcome at Target Center

D’Lo departs

The other major contributing dysfunction is the fact that the team never seemed to gel behind D’Angelo Russell as the team’s point guard. While DLo certainly can score points and has plenty of skillsets to offer the right team, his struggles on defense and his inability to act as the Timberwolves’ on-court dispatch had left the team on the short end of the final score on more than one occasion.

And so, the Timberwolves front office mobilized once more, this time in an effort to minimize the harsh tone that D’Angelo Russell was creating in the locker room and trade for a player whose role was to get everyone involved, who had the ability to help involve C Rudy Gobert in the Timberwolves offense, and who had the ability to step up and score if the Timberwolves needed offense.

Timberwolves’ afterthought becomes a primary focus

When the Timberwolves traded Russell, there was an obvious void for the Timberwolves on offense, as D’Lo had improved his ability to score so well that he had become the team’s third-leading scorer and that was a huge boost to a Timberwolves roster that had lost their second-leading scorer, Karl-Anthony Towns, for 53 games.

In return, the Minnesota Timberwolves added two players to their backcourt. The first and foremost addition was veteran point guard Mike Conley Jr.  The Timberwolves needed a field general, a trustworthy and dependable extension of the head coach’s wishes in the guy who set the plays and distributed the basketball, and D’Angelo Russell was simply not suited for that role.

But in what seemed like an afterthought addition, the Timberwolves shrewdly also added a young defensive wing to the roster in the form of Nickeil Alexander-Walker. With only a few games to go in the regular season, the bar of expectations for NAW was set pretty low. But that would translate into pleasant surprises.