PMOTT3 and Chuck Texas Early Off-Season Review: Minnesota Timberwolves

[CBA]

I'm still afraid what Flip might do.

[blind prophet]

C+

It's hard to give a lot of credit for taking the consensus best player when you're at #1. The other moves were minor to the point of not being worthy of consideration. They didn't really do a lot trade or free agent wise to improve themselves.

So they made the obviously correct choice, didn't make any screw-ups, but it was a mediocre off-season cause they didn't improve now? They don't have any interest in winning now and had basically no flexibility with rubio/pek taking up all of their cap. I really don't know how they could have possibly had a better offseason, it's an obvious A to me.

Seriously? They didn't make one trade of note, but there's no way they could have done better?

Let's keep in mind C+ is, in reality, slightly above average. Not sure why we don't just have a more traditional A-B-C-D-F scale.

I agree, not only with the C+, but a better scale is a simple A-F scale, but we also need a INC for risky off seasons that could be massively rewarding or franchise disasters.

Yes I'm thinking in advance to the Kings reviews with my desire to see an incomplete, but others may feel the same way with some other teams as well.

[C.lupus]

We need to clean the gutter next offseason. Too much fat on this team, and we need Flip to hire Joerger already.

It's kind of hard to hire a guy who's already under contract with another team. Next year Flip will go after Jeff Van Gundy or Thibs. My money is on JVG being the coach next year.

Anyway...Bjelica is getting overlooked in this thread. He's a very good basketball player. Obviously an unknown in the NBA but so is Towns.

I'm not sure how to objectively grade this offseason but subjectively I'm happy so I'll go with that. A- for happiness.

[AQuintus]

Current Depth Chart: (really rough)

PG: Ricky Rubio/Tyus Jones
SG: K-Mart/Zach Levine/Lorenzo Brown
SF: Andrew Wiggins/Shabazz Muhammed/Damjan Rudez
PF: Karl Towns/Adriean Payne/Nemanja Bjelica/Anthony Bennet
C: Gorgui Deng/Pekovic/KG

PG: Ricky Rubio/ Lorenzo Brown/ Tyus Jones
SG: Kevin Martin/ Zach LAVINE (with an "a")
SF: Andrew Wiggins/ Shabazz Muhammad/ Damjan Rudez
PF: Kevin Garnett/ Nemanja Bjelica/ Adriean Payne/ Anthony Bennett
C: Karl-Anthony Towns/ Gorgui Dieng/ Nikola Pekovic

[Texas Chuck]

Thanks! ^

[Domejandro]

I'm still afraid what Flip might do.

Flip has been a pretty incredible President of Basketball Operations so far.

Trey Burke for Shabazz Muhammad and Gorgui Dieng.
Signed Kevin Martin to a very good deal.
Traded Kevin Love and two horrid players for Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett, and Thaddeus Young.
Drafted Zach LaVine.
Resigned Ricky Rubio to a four year fifty-four million dollar deal (the raise in contracts this off-season makes it look very, very good if he stays healthy)
Traded Thaddeus Young for Kevin Garnett.
Brought over the Euro-League MVP, Nemanja Bjelica, for absolute pennies.
Traded up for Tyus Jones


His only bad moves in my opinion was the awful Nikola Pekovic deal and possibly the Adreian Payne trade.

[azwfan]

I'd give the Wolves an A for the offseason. IMO they are building well through the draft and this offseason was about collecting another potential cornerstone player and not screwing up future flexibility. They've done that.

I think next offseason will be the big one for Minnesota. They got their young guys in place they should have some seasoning, and next offseason they'll need to add some vet pieces to complement the young core.

A

[HartfordWhalers]

B+?

I have no idea what to say here.

Minnesota traded up to get a nice upside pg (including the 2019 2nd was expensive but worth it), dumped Bud for free, didn't sell a single 2nd, convinced Bjelica to come over, and took the no brainer in Towns (with Minnesota the only team reported to not view him as a no brainer. All sounds like an A.

Then they also paid 8m a year to KG with no team option. Kept Flip as Coach. And the morass that is Bennett/Payne is no closer to being solved than before. It feels Jekel and Hyde.

So, in that spirit, I will start with one grade and finish with another:

Lets call it an A-.

[bondom34]

B+?

I have no idea what to say here.

Minnesota traded up to get a nice upside pg (including the 2019 2nd was expensive but worth it), dumped Bud for free, didn't sell a single 2nd, convinced Bjelica to come over, and took the no brainer in Towns (with Minnesota the only team reported to not view him as a no brainer. All sounds like an A.

Then they also paid 8m a year to KG with no team option. Kept Flip as Coach. And the morass that is Bennett/Payne is no closer to being solved than before. It feels Jekel and Hyde.

So, in that spirit, I will start with one grade and finish with another:

Lets call it an A-.

What an appropriate way to put it.

[CBA]

I'm still afraid what Flip might do.

Flip has been a pretty incredible President of Basketball Operations so far.

His only bad moves in my opinion was the awful Nikola Pekovic deal and possibly the Adreian Payne trade.

HartfordWhalers put it pretty well. I feel like Flip's been succeeding despite himself. He fell backwards into Wiggins then tanked despite not trying fairly hard not to. Everything involving Thaddeus Young was dumb. Zach Lavine was predictably bad. Keeping Martin and especially Pekovic made little sense and has now partially backfired.

Basically, it looks like a lesser version of what happened in Cleveland. In a failed attempt to "reload," the team managed to fall backwards into a nice rebuild.