Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Springtime; Claude Monet; 1872

The Minnesota Timberwolves barely made the playoffs last season, after barely making the playoffs the year prior. The franchise hasn’t won a playoff series since 2004, a streak that matches that of the Sacramento Kings. Only the Charlotte Hornets née Bobcats have a longer streak. (The current Hornets franchise has never won a playoff series. NBA teams in Charlotte last won a playoff series in 2002. That team is now the New Orleans Pelicans. In either case, 21-year-old North Carolinians have never witnessed a Charlotte NBA team win a playoff series.)

Joy for the Timberwolves franchise has been sparse since the downfall of the Kevin Garnett era two decades ago. The team has had All-Stars (like Kevin Love and Karl-Anthony Towns) and beloved heroes (like Ricky Rubio and, for a brief moment, Jimmy Butler). Until now, it hasn’t really had a player that truly, clearly looks like a future MVP. Until now, the franchise hasn’t really looked comfortable going all in, regardless of the long-term impacts.

Anthony Edwards arrived with the No. 1 pick in 2020, and is in the process of elevating to All-NBA level, to the MVP longlist, to universal respect. He’s on the final year of his rookie deal, and he entered the NBA as a teenager: so he’s right on time.

One summer ago, the Timberwolves hired a new general manager, Tim Connelly, throwing lots of money and equity to get him after he’d built a (to that point) solid team in Denver. And that well-compensated new general manager threw the entire spice cupboard to nab a transformative and expensive defender to put in the middle of the starting lineup in Rudy Gobert. This was despite having Towns, to that point the only All-Star on the roster, at center.

On paper, Towns and Gobert’s skillsets compliment each other: Gobert as a screener, roller and defender and Towns as a shooter and creator. In practice the duo was restricted by injury and on-court discomfort in Year 1. It never really came together. But it also didn’t look so bad that Connelly had to pivot this summer. Instead, because of a great 4-1 showing against the eventual champion Nuggets (I’m being only mildly facetious), the franchise doubled down.

The Timberwolves never really do this. Glen Taylor, the (slowly) exiting owner of the franchise, has never been seen as spendthrift when it comes to his men’s basketball program. But he is exiting, slowly. And the incoming bosses Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez don’t seem to have that same hesitation to invest. And so this summer, instead of pivoting to a more sustainable blueprint, Connelly had the green light to invest in this roster: he signed Edwards to a (no-brainer) max extension, he re-signed Naz Reid on a market-rate deal (even though Reid is most natural as a center, like Towns and Gobert) and he gave a rich extension to rangy defender extraordinaire Jaden McDaniels.

Those deals plus the existing contracts that Gobert and Towns are under commit the Timberwolves — the Timberwolves! — to $166 million for five players in 2024-25. The projected salary cap is $142 million. The projected luxury tax threshold is $172 million, and the Wolves have nine roster spots (4-5 of those being legitimate rotation spots, including starting and back-up point guard) to fill. Minnesota would need to re-sign or replace Mike Conley and Kyle Anderson. We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars over the tax line next season. (Any expected bump in the salary cap and tax threshold is expected in 2025-26, and will be limited to 10% increases under the new labor deal.)

This is the Timberwolves. Historically, the tax line is avoided, not trampled.

We don’t know how Lore and A-Rod are going to operate the team. I presume that because the NBA has made it more difficult to operate a team far above the tax line Connelly will try to drop that number to preserve flexibility.

Here’s the thing: who cares about 2024-25?!

This is basketball. Live for today. Discover what you have without concern for its sustainability. This is the Minnesota Timberwolves. Joy has been spare and halting. Don’t skip to dreaming about a dynasty. Don’t spend your precious time plugging Towns into the trade machine. (Towns for Tyus Jones and Kyle Kuzma works next summer, just saying.) Enjoy a chance at a real playoff seed, a real playoff chance, perhaps even a playoff series win. Enjoy every Ant Man crunch time highlight. Enjoy every Stifle Tower block. Enjoy every KAT stepback. Enjoy every Jaden McD deflection. Enjoy every Naz Reid three. Enjoy every Slo Mo hesi.

If this team is legitimately good — and wins over the Nuggets and Celtics suggest a legitimately good team — then it doesn’t matter that the team will likely not exist in its current state beyond this year. Timberwolves fans deserve a decade of joy. But that’s never guaranteed, even for the exceptional franchises like the L.A. Lakers, who spent most of the 2010s flirting with the Wolves in the Western Conference standings. Wanting more denies you the opportunity for happiness in the here and the now. If this is the best Timberwolves team since ‘04 (58 wins and the conference finals), it’d be a real shame to forgo the joy of experiencing it in fears of its tenuous lifespan.

Why worry about next year? Nothing tomorrow is ever guaranteed today, anyway. Even if the cap sheet and draft asset list were perfectly clean — like, say, that of the Thunder — you can’t ink in future achievements. Perfect planning doesn’t get you trophies. It gets you perfect plans. Those tend to run up against reality; only sometimes do they survive. (The Thunder brain trust knows this. Thunder fans feel this, too. You can tell because despite the exceptionally bright future on paper, when the team loses a game it feels bad and when the team wins a game it feels good. Sports!)

Whether this is the dawn of a new era for Minnesota Timberwolves basketball or a meteor briefly streaking across the sky, bask in its rare light. Embrace the joy available this season. Worry about next season when it arrives.

Or: don’t! This is basketball, not your household budget. Unless deeply arcane rules and mechanics bring you joy — no knock, I’ve played Crusader Kings II, I get it — there are enough stress centers in this life without second aprons and hard caps and all that. You don’t have to be an accountant or lawyer to be a fan of a basketball team. It’s not being a casual or naive or anything negative to watch a bunch of dudes play a sport without getting into the nitty gritty realism of what’s next. You are not lesser for not being concerned about the future of the Minnesota Timberwolves while enjoying the present Minnesota Timberwolves. This is sports. It’s supposed to be fun. Let it be!

League Pass Cupdate

Here’s what the results and standings look like about 15% the way through the 2023-24 League Pass Cup.

The Orlando Magic remain our only unbeaten team with wins over the Rockets and Hornets. They have four more League Pass Cup games this month: at the Pacers, then at home against the Raptors, Hornets and Wizards.

The Blazers are surprisingly right there in second, and then the pack with one win follows.

We’re in a pretty light span for the Cup — three games over the next week, then it picks up around and after Thanksgiving.

Schedule

Twenty-eight of the 30 teams are in action on Wednesday, owing to the empty Election Day schedule. All times Eastern. National TV games in bold. Our League Pass Cup game has a 🏆.

Wizards at Hornets, 7 🏆
Jazz at Pacers, 7
Celtics at Sixers, 7
Clippers at Nets, 7:30
Spurs at Knicks, 7:30, ESPN
Suns at Bulls, 8
Lakers at Rockets, 8
Heat at Grizzlies, 8
Pistons at Bucks, 8
Pelicans at Timberwolves, 8
Cavaliers at Thunder, 8
Raptors at Mavericks, 8:30
Warriors at Nuggets, 10, ESPN
Blazers at Kings, 10

Links

Sorry for the bad link on Tuesday to Tom Haberstroh’s Clippers piece.

Dan Devine with a deep dive on the Bucks, building the plane in the air.

Chris Paul is a national hero. Adam Silver says that CP3 told him that part of the reason the All-Star Game is so sloppy is because the NBA turns it into a spectacle with pre-game introductions that disrupt typical warm-ups and a halftime that’s too long to let guys stay loose. So the NBA is planning to shorten the intros and halftime beginning this year. I don’t know if CP3 is telling the truth (I think the game is sloppy because everyone is gunning for a sparkly highlight or taking a lazy three, and almost no one is playing defense except when it would be funny) but we salute him nonetheless.

Jared Dubin on the budding wonder of the Tyrese Maxey-Joel Embiid pick and roll.

The Lakers complained to the league office about how refs are officiating LeBron James, citing a couple of plays where the team thought fouls should have been called late against the Heat on Monday. Teams are always complaining to the league office about how their stars are being officiated. That this became a news story, in my opinion, is a sign that the Lakers want LeBron to know they are advocating for him and a sign that the Lakers are comfortable putting higher levels of pressure on the league to take another look at how much contact refs are allowing against LeBron. I do think it’s pretty nasty business to air it out like this given how vitriolic fans can be and have been toward officials. Also, the league already reviewed calls and non-calls from the final two minutes and determined the refs didn’t make any mistakes. And you’re now escalating it to the store manager, and telling everyone you’re doing it? Boo.

Thinking Basketball breaks down Chet Holmgren.

It sounds like Mason Plumlee’s knee injury is not too serious. Legitimately a big deal for the Clippers.

Speaking of the Clip Set, here’s Marc Stein on their desperation level. And here’s Kelly Dwyer on the Harden-era Clips as a 1970s era star-studded disaster movie.

Kitchen lessons Scott Hines wished he learned sooner. For me: it’s not to fear “wasting ingredients.” Try stuff that is a bit beyond your comfort level. If it fails, try again. Flour is not that expensive. (Some ingredients are expensive. There for a minute I was being really stingy with eggs.)

I have three 1-month subscriptions to Charlotte Wilder’s The Wilder Things newsletter to give away. Drop a comment on this post with your favorite facial hair in NBA history to enter the giveaway. I’ll pick my three favorites on Thursday morning. (If you already subscribe to Charlotte but still want to share NBA facial hair thoughts, just note that in the comment.)

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Dereck Lively II is being mentored by Tyson Chandler. Pretty good mentor for the situation and role that Lively will be in to start his career.

Alright, that’s all for now. Be excellent to each other.