Offseason Grades - Minnesota Timberwolves

[bondom34]

K_Chile22's offseason grade:
Minnesota Timberwolves transactions

Front office
Rosas out, Gupta in (for now)

Draft
none.

Trades
Traded Ricky Rubio for Taurean Prince and future 2nd.
Traded Jarrett Culver and Juancho Hernangomez for Pat Beverley.

Free agency
Re-signed Jarred Vanderbilt, 3/$13.8M
Re-signed Jordan McLaughlin, 3/$6.48M

Offseason Thoughts
Two trades are solid. Don't have anything interesting to say on either, solid moves.
Good value on the two guys they're bringing back.

Even if all the reporting contains no spin, just an awful look organizationally. KAT seems pissed based on his media day, and that's bad. Gotta bump them down just for organizational chaos.

Grade
C-. Roster moves are high Cs to low Bs but franchise instability seems too much to ignore.
2022 Prediction
Just outside the play-in
Offseason in gif form




Mamba4goat's offseason grade:

Minnesota Timberwolves transactions

Front office
none.

Draft
none.

Trades
Traded Ricky Rubio for Taurean Prince and future 2nd.
Traded Jarrett Culver and Juancho Hernangomez for Pat Beverley.

Free agency
Re-signed Jarred Vanderbilt, 3/$13.8M
Re-signed Jordan McLaughlin, 3/$6.48M

Offseason Thoughts
Every deal seemed to be undoing a mistake. Rubio was a bad fit (despite making sense on paper) and moving him for an upgrade of Juancho makes some sense. Turning Juancho and Culver, two pieces that weren't working at all, into Beverly--a better fitting PG option than Rubio also makes some sense. They Brought back Vanderbilt and McLaughlin on good, affordable deals too. This seemed like the safe, realistic approach to the offseason and aside from the Gersson Rosas mess, it seemed like a decent offseason for a team that hasn't seen its finished product fully healthy.

Grade
C
It was safe, but not significant aside from reshuffling the deck and not adding bad money (which is a win in Minnesota standards). A Ben Simmons trade probably makes it an A though.

2022 Prediction
7-11
If healthy, I think they're a play-in team at minimum. It's unfortunately a big "if" though.
Offseason in gif form



bondom34's offseason grade:

Minnesota Timberwolves transactions

Front office
Parted ways with President of Basketball Operations Gersan Rosas.

Draft
none.

Trades
Traded Ricky Rubio for Taurean Prince and future 2nd.
Traded Jarrett Culver and Juancho Hernangomez for Pat Beverley.

Free agency
Reisigned Jarred Vanderbilt, 3/$13.8M
Re-signed Jordan McLaughlin, 3/$6.48M

Offseason Thoughts
Well, I wrote this before the whole front office thing:

I mean this is going to be short for obvious reasons, they didn't do much. No issues with either free agent contract, the Rubio trade feels like a downgrade but they traded for a useful backup PG in Beverley to make up for it.

I don't really see it making much a difference for their season outcome but a pretty quiet offseason that I can't grade overly positive or negative.

But now I have no clue. Don't know what weight to put onto it but it seems not ideal that they did this so close to the season, and front office turmoil just in general isn't good. Saying that, I also don't think they had quite the upheaval some others did, but don't know where to land on this because in the end it's feeling like every time the Wolves start to maybe try to sorta turn things around something happens.

Grade
It was a B- before the front office change, so now I'm not sure. I gave Dallas a D+, but their front office stuff felt worse, but they also re-signed Doncic. That feels too low but again no idea. C? The original grade? Think I'll go with the C.

After thinking I'm going with a C because they didn't do much but in the end what do I do with this.
2022 Prediction
11th-13th in the West, just outside the playin
Offseason in gif form

[giberish]

In addition to the FO uncertainty I'm not a big fan of their other moves. IMO Rubio's better then Beverly (not wildly so but still better) and he helped Edwards develop last year. Don't see Prince vs. Culver and Hernangomez as an obvious win either. Then the biggest problem is that they started the offseason with a gaping void at PF and did nothing about it. If you're (IMO) giving up some talent to reshuffle some guys couldn't you end up with a credible PF option in the mix?

[babyjax13]

I like their offseason more than most, I guess. I was really hopeful about Juancho, but that was misplaced. Using Culver to dump him for a useful expiring makes a lot of sense. I agree that Rubio is better than Beverley, but I think Beverley is a better fit on the roster. The Rosas stuff is hard to comment on in terms of grading the offseason: do I give them positive marks for removing him, was this going on long-term and they should have done so earlier? The main thing they need is health and better coaching, they addressed coaching last year and I think the health is finally here. C for now, as not much happened, but they may be in a much better position if they can grab Simmons.

[zimpy27]

If they trade for Simmons and don't lose KAT or Ant then it is an A+ offseason.

Right now it's C+

[HartfordWhalers]

C.

They had a big problem, and did little to fix it. They didn't do any harm, but they barely fixed it. It is a C, and I don't see much wiggle room.

{Although a Simmons deal will clearly blow it all up and be not so boring of an offseason if it happens. But I'm not marking Minnesota down for not having a Simmons deal as of now, the price might not make it make sense.}

[Tukkerwolf]

So true. And sad. But true.

If Jaden McDaniels is as good as every Wolves fan seems to think (or hope), our off-season grade is a B+ to me. Doing nothing stupid roster wise and banking on the internal growth of this extremely young roster is the way I wanted it to go. If he doesn't pan out a C- is the highest I can go. And then the Rosas-disaster isn't taken into account.

[HornetJail]

C- for doing nothing.

Immediately skyrockets to somewhere between a B and A if they make a trade for Simmons depending on how much they give up. (and I think they will). They win the offseason if they only have to give up a combo of Beasley/Bev/Prince + 2 picks.

[wolves_89]

I give the Wolves off-season a C-. The moves they did make (adding Beverley/Prince and resigning Vanderbilt/McLaughlin) were fine but they didn't make the team any better than they were last season. Minnesota has had a gaping hole at PF that the team has failed to address the past two off-seasons (or at the trade deadline). At this point the inability to add even an average PF is bordering on negligence. I got the strong impression that the off-season was completely about going after Ben Simmons in that the team wouldn't trade anything of value to improve the roster because they were saving their ammo for a Simmons trade. If they get Simmons it will end up being a very good off-season, if not it will be yet another failure. Personally, I think the team would have been better off going after good role players rather than swinging for the fences.

[Texas Chuck]

If Edwards is really a star and McDaniels is really a secondary star, both of which feel premature and the latter feels to be based more on desire than evidence then this is fine--you have two young stars taking a major step and ideally a full season of your veteran star and you should be a playoff team even if the lack of defense makes advancing once you get there very challenging.

But you let a guy who in the postmortem we are expected to believe was a known cancer for months make your FO decisions for you--and the narrative from the same sources insisting he was a known problem for months prior to the firing was that this guy was a genius with a masterplan and it all feels like the usual spin somehow still being taken at face value by some.

So either you had a great GM you had to unexpectedly fire which would be a disaster. Or you had a disaster of a GM that you inexplicably let make all your off-season decisions before firing him which would also be a disaster.

On Rosas alone this feels like an F. And banking everything on Edwards and McDaniels is risky. Could pay off big obviously and I'm not saying it won't. But I feel like the hype on McDaniels has gotten so high and he has essentially no chance of living up to it.

And beyond all that, you have one of the hardest stars to build around in Towns because its very difficult to win with a center who is poor defensively and they've done nothing to attempt to make that work the way Denver has with Jokic and Towns isn't as good at either end as Jokic making it doubly difficult.

[shangrila]

Who is calling McDaniels a secondary star?

[SmokeyPaw]

Who is calling McDaniels a secondary star?

I think a realistic outcome for him is to become a high level 2 way role player - somewhat similiar to Covington. That's pretty valuable, but I dont think of that as a secondary star. Thats more of a Jrue type player I think.

[Wolveswin]

D-

Wow a lot of optimistic folks on here.

Fired their POBO for indiscretions. Ownership flux. Acquired no upgrade other than Hope: Hope your current players improved in offseason (so do all other teams), Hope vet-deck-chair-shuffle improves team, Hope roster that didn’t add a vacated 1st round pick doesn’t suffer from that loss, Hope Towns last year was a Covid/injury anomaly, Hope Edwards trend is legit, Hope Simmons is your savior (Hope all eggs in one Simmons basket is a strategy).

Hope is not a strategy.

For a team rumored to be all-in on winning (all the talk of 2 or 3 FRPs and even youth like McDaniels on trade table) fixated on Simmons as ONLY offseason move is a bad bad look. Other upgrades are (were) out there.

Even if they acquire Simmons (who I actually like on roster with major *), are Wolves sure acquiring say a inferior upgrade to a Simmons, wouldn’t be a better overall upgrade? After all, should cost less assets and could have been acquired weeks/months ago — removing them from the Simmons drama. This not-Simmons-Upgrade could be on roster now learning, playing with team, forming a winning atmosphere.

[gom]

I cannot find the Bucks topic, bondom34. You administrators must have redhot tools, right?

If you can, could you please post a link in the response? Unless of course I hallucinated the existence of said topic. Then please ignore the presumptive request. Yep.

[bondom34]

I cannot find the Bucks topic, bondom34. You administrators must have redhot tools, right?

If you can, could you please post a link in the response? Unless of course I hallucinated the existence of said topic. Then please ignore the presumptive request. Yep.

I'll post tonight in a minute . Thought I did, and got them from Mamba and K_Chile but never posted and guess I deleted my draft, will write one up. Good catch!

[gom]

I cannot find the Bucks topic, bondom34. You administrators must have redhot tools, right?

If you can, could you please post a link in the response? Unless of course I hallucinated the existence of said topic. Then please ignore the presumptive request. Yep.

I'll post tonight in a minute . Thought I did, and got them from Mamba and K_Chile but never posted and guess I deleted my draft, will write one up. Good catch!

The weird thing is I remember posting in the thread. But I'm a Heat fan and naturally delusional.

[bondom34]

I cannot find the Bucks topic, bondom34. You administrators must have redhot tools, right?

If you can, could you please post a link in the response? Unless of course I hallucinated the existence of said topic. Then please ignore the presumptive request. Yep.

I'll post tonight in a minute . Thought I did, and got them from Mamba and K_Chile but never posted and guess I deleted my draft, will write one up. Good catch!

The weird thing is I remember posting in the thread. But I'm a Heat fan and naturally delusional.

Yeah I'm confused b/c I searched and didn't see it either and I'm pretty certain these started after that whole thing with the board missing posts due to the hackers/whatever it was. but good catch and thanks, its up now!