In late November, the Minnesota Timberwolves were two games under .500 after they dropped a game at home to the Sacramento Kings. Anthony Edwards said his team’s identity, which had been elite defense a year prior, was “soft as hell.”
“We can’t talk to each other,” said Edwards. “Just a bunch of little kids. Just like we playing with a bunch of little kids. Everybody, the whole team. We just can’t talk to each other. And we’ve got to figure it out, because we can’t go down this road.”
The Wolves were battling the fallout of another adversarial situation, one that had them playing like a disconnected group of individual players. The Karl-Anthony Towns trade stunned the entire roster and put everyone behind schedule early in the year.
Minnesota was at a crossroads after that loss to the Kings. Players could have mentally separated even further, getting caught up in their emotions. Instead, they bound closer together through the adversity and made another run to the Western Conference Finals. With a chip on their collective shoulder, the Timberwolves connected like a band of brothers. It became more apparent as the season progressed last year. Now, the Wolves are trying to ride that connection to a championship with a roster that is largely the same as last year’s.
“We have a lot of guys who come from different backgrounds,” Rudy Gobert said last week on The Young Man and the Three podcast. “But I think all of us are underdogs. We’ve all had to overcome a lot of things in our lives, in our careers.”
There have been a handful of moments over the last three years that could have been breaking points for the Wolves, some of which involve Gobert in a certain way.
Players struggled greatly to get on the same page as Gobert during his first season with the Wolves, especially D’Angelo Russell, who reportedly had a strained relationship with Gobert. The Wolves replaced Russell with Mike Conley at the deadline that year, which instilled newfound hope in what had been an underwhelming season.
But in Game 82, when the Wolves were battling for seeding in the Play-In Tournament, Gobert and Kyle Anderson got in a heated exchange, which ended with Gobert throwing a punch at his teammate. As punishment, the Timberwolves suspended Gobert for their first Play-In game.
Fast-forward to early last season, down the stretch of a contested game against the Toronto Raptors, Gobert intentionally took an offensive three-second violation after Julius Randle didn’t pass him the ball when he was posted up near the rim. Edwards was furious with Gobert in the moment, and the Wolves ended up losing a winnable game 110-105, starting a four-game losing streak, which featured that loss to the Kings.
Conflicts happen. These are grown men battling together in the highest level of a sport. There are bound to be low points. Preferably, they don’t happen in the public eye. Regardless, what matters is how players and teams respond to those conflicts.
“We are in a place where we really embrace each other,” said Gobert. “We really want to see each other shine, each other succeed.”
The growing pains of Gobert’s first days here. The altercation he had with Slow-Mo and the debacle in Toronto. All of those potholes seemed hundreds of miles in the rearview mirror during Game 5 between the Wolves and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Gobert finished with a playoff career-high 27 points on 12 of 15 (80%) shooting. He also hauled in 24 rebounds, anchoring the Wolves when nobody else could. In the final seconds, when Gobert subbed out of the game with the series win firmly in hand, his teammates mobbed him. Everyone, up and down the roster, had a childish-like smile on their face.
They were far from the group of little kids who didn’t talk to each other early in the season. The Wolves were advancing to the second round of the playoffs convincingly, and the chemistry they had with one another was a big reason why.
Any egos, negative emotions, or personal agendas that hindered the Wolves early in the season were gone. All that mattered at the end of Game 5 was Minnesota’s series win and ensuring that Gobert felt the love from his teammates.
That night in LA, the Wolves looked more like a family than at any point earlier in the season. The players genuinely want to see their “brothers” succeed, on and off the court.
“When you see your teammate getting paid, everyone is super excited, super happy,” said Gobert. “There’s not these things of, ‘Oh, he gets paid, why don’t I get paid that much?’ I think everyone is super excited for their brothers and their teammates, and it says a lot about the love we have for one another. That’s fun. It’s fun to be a part of.”
The group that bonded like brothers last season largely remains intact this season. They lost Nickiel Alexander-Walker from the rotation when he signed with the Atlanta Hawks. Luka Garza and Josh Minott signed with the Boston Celtics, and Jesse Edwards signed overseas. However, Julius Randle and Naz Reid signed long-term extensions. The Wolves also brought back Joe Ingles, who was an instrumental voice in Minnesota’s locker room last season.
The front office is banking on continuity and familiarity to be enough for the Wolves to break out of the Western Conference in the playoffs. In addition to familiarity, the players can all relate to adversity in some ways regarding their journey in the NBA. That should be the sturdy foundation of their season.
More potholes will come this season. Hopefully, none of them are as deep and damaging as the KAT trade, but they’ll still need to navigate around them. Maybe they pop up early in the year, or perhaps the Wolves coast deep into the playoffs, where they find themselves in a 2-0 hole in the Conference Finals.
Regardless, the Wolves have a strong chassis bound together by their past. Everyone has a chip on their shoulder. They all have that underdog mentality. Bringing them even closer together, the Wolves have gone through adversity as a collective group, coming out of those situations stronger than before.
Minnesota enters this season far from the childish team that had a debacle in Toronto ten months ago. The Wolves are ready to take their success further than they have in the last two years. They haven’t made any additions to the roster that would increase their chances, but Minnesota’s family-like chemistry, which they forged through adversity, is essential in building a contender.