Mailbag | Wiggins' Rise, Stephenson's Future And More

Welcome to the second edition of the Timberwolves.com mailbag.

Did you miss the first one? That disappoints me and I wish you wouldn't have told me that, but you can still read it here.

Last week, I predicted a Falcons Super Bowl win and inserted a quote from The Office in the mailbag, so things can only get better.

Same as last week. Four questions. Let’s roll.

The two things that have stuck out the most for me are:

A.)    His 3-point shooting. He started the season out shooting like 50 percent from the 3-point line. He’s at 34.4 percent as of Feb. 10 which is a career high, up 4.4 percent from last season. We are 53 games into the season and he’s shooting 3.5 threes per game, up from 2.3 last season. This is a trend, not a mirage. If he keeps improving, how do you stop him? He can drive, he can hit that midrange jumper (and get like a foot higher than his defender because he’s a freaking pogo stick) and now he has the outside shot. Watch out.

B.)    Wiggins is starting to earn the “get on my back, I got this” label. He’s not there, yet. But with the game-winning shot against Phoenix, the game-tying shot against Orlando and even his pass to Tyus Jones in Wednesday’s win over Toronto, Wiggins is making clutch plays in big situations. For a team that’s struggled to close games out, that’s huge.

There, of course, are things to improve on. There always will be. As soon as you aren’t getting better, you’re getting worse (write that downs, kids).

Wiggins has been a willing passer and is averaging a career-high 2.5 assists per game, but that number probably has to improve, as does his 4.2 rebounds per game. And on the defensive end, Wiggins has all the tools to be elite. He just needs to put it all together and with Tom Thibodeau as his coach, that should happen sooner rather than later. He’s only 21 years old. Plenty of time. If you’re not exciting about Wiggins’ future, you must have just taken NyQuil. Night!

Thank you, DaZeeBo, for that question. The Wolves signed Stephenson to a 10-day contract on Wednesday and in his first game, he played 20 minutes and finished with six points, four rebounds and an assist in a Wolves in.

If he keeps playing like that, there’s probably a good chance he’ll get a second contract and then we’ll go from there. But this is all pretty fluid, right? The Wolves are in a spot where they have some flexibility with their roster and could do a number of things with it.

Is that a cop out of an answer? Absolutely, it is. I will say that I was very impressed with Stephenson in his first game with the team. He was intense and for him to play 20 minutes, including the entire fourth quarter, that tells me that Thibodeau trusts him more than I trust myself to not wipe Cheese-Itz dust on my pants instead of using a napkin.

If Stephenson plays like he did in his Wolves debut, he’ll stick around in the league, whether it be with the Wolves or another squad.

That’s a tricky question because if the Wolves still had Love, they wouldn’t have Wiggins since he was part of the trade. And they probably would have won more than 16 games with Love in 2013-14, erasing 99.9 percent of the chance the team had at the No. 1 pick and Karl-Anthony Towns. So that’s kind of a hard question to answer . . .

Obviously Love is an All-Star and would be a solid addition to any team. But if Love was still in Minnesota, a lot of other players wouldn’t be.

In my lifetime? At Life Time? In my 6-foot and under league? BE MORE SPECIFIC, NICK!

But fine. I’ll give you my five all-time favorite players to watch (that I can remember, of course):

5. Russell Westbrook

Westbrook gives me the “WHAT DID HE JUST DO?!”, “AM I ON FIRE?”, “IS HE ON FIRE?”, “DEAR GOD, SOMEONE’S ON FIRE! LIKE LITERALLY ON FIRE!” feels. I’ve never seen anyone like him.

4. LeBron James

I don’t really remember Michael Jordan playing until he was with the Wizards and went through a jar of Icy Hot every night. In my basketball-remembering-watching lifetime, James has been the best player. He should probably be higher on this list, but I’m putting as much effort into this as Nick did on this question.

3. Kevin Garnett

I’m from Minnesota. When people think of Timberwolves basketball, they think of KG. And I had roughly 13 KG jerseys growing up and now have two. My mom had a lot of garage sales that I was not informed about. We lost a lot of good jerseys and trading cards that way. Thanks, mom.

2. Jason Kidd

I grew up as the short and tiny kid. The only position for me, I thought, was point guard. It turns out that there’s no position for me at all because I’m 5-10 and can’t dribble a basketball. But I always envisioned if I was good, I would be like Kidd. Crafty and a guy who did a little bit of everything, including add a 3-point shot to his game when he was 54 years old.

1. Steve Nash

This one isn’t close. Nash’s days with Phoenix (the second time), I mean, how can basketball be more entertaining? I listened to a podcast featuring former Suns forward Jared Dudley and Dudley called Nash the best passer and best teammate he’s ever played with. You can't disagree. 

The best part was that Nash didn’t look like he was a two-time MVP. He looked like a regular dude. And then he did stuff like this:

That's all I've got for this week. To be featured in next week's mailbag, email socialmedia@timberwolves.com.

As always, thanks for reading. Enjoy your weekend.