Seventeen percent of the season is in the books and the Minnesota Timberwolves, at 6-and-8, have yet to earn a high-quality win.
Winning in Cleveland Sunday night was their best of the season without question, but Cleveland didn’t have All-Stars Donovan Mitchell and Jarrett Allen and Minnesota nearly blew a 22-point lead with 10 minutes left in the game.
Their other wins: Oklahoma City twice, San Antonio, the Lakers and Houston. All four are likely to be picking in the lottery next summer.
There is some belief that their identity crisis and learning how to gel with Rudy Gobert took a step in the right direction with D’Angelo Russell scoring 30 points with 12 assists against the Cavs, but that’s his first really good game of the season.
“He came out hot. He was really locked in on his shooting,” head coach Chris Finch said after the 129-124 victory in Cleveland. “We blew the game open when he was able to get his teammates involved and also continue to look for his own.
And the broadcast/media narrative that Russell is the key to the Wolves adds another layer of confusion. On the Bally Sports North broadcast Sunday night, longtime analyst Jim Petersen suggested Russell holds keys to how good the Wolves can be. And The Athletic‘s Jon Krawczynski echoed that thought in his game recap.
“He holds the keys for how good this team can be,” Krawczynski wrote.
Russell, before the season began, appeared to be a $31.3 million cog in the wheel. A key player for sure, but not the guy who determines how good or how far the Wolves can go. Remember what Draymond Green said about Anthony Edwards after the Gobert trade?
“What this trade says to me is that they believe that they have a superstar in Anthony Edwards,” Green said in July. “You think about the NBA. What championships used to be was having a great guard and a great big. And that says to me that they believe that [Edwards] can carry the torch.”
Maybe the Timberwolves will morph into a team where it doesn’t matter who the lead dog is on a nightly basis. But how often does that work in the NBA? Giannis is king in Milwaukee, Steph is the man in Golden State, Jayson Tatum is the unquestioned top dog in Boston and Nikola Jokic is the man in Denver.
To be fair, Edwards hasn’t not taken the bull by the horns. After scoring 29+ points in four of six games to start the season he’s scored 20+ points in just three of the last eight games, including 10 against the Cavs and only 11 in last week’s loss to Phoenix.
Duds like that don’t happen to the best players on the planet so frequently. Steph Curry hasn’t scored fewer than 21 in a game this season. Same with Giannis, who hasn’t scored fewer than 21 and has a double-double in all but two games. Tatum hasn’t scored fewer than 23.
All three of those players are surrounded by talented players who can score, but they also get theirs. That’s got to be the next step for Edwards – getting his every single night.
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