It takes time to build a successful team.
I’d imagine it’s like building a house.
Disclaimer: I have never built a house or a team.
Things just aren’t instantly put together (unless it’s one of those pop-up houses I’ve seen on Facebook lately). You need to construct the pieces and make sure they fit, and from there, you assemble and hope everything works out. And if it doesn’t you adjust on the fly. If you do it the right way, you have a beautiful house with a pool and an outdoor basketball hoop. If you construct it incorrectly, well, you rebuild.
The Minnesota Timberwolves weren’t trying to build a house in 2017-18, but a culture of winning basketball.
While their season is over after Wednesday night’s Game 5 loss to the Rockets at the Toyota Center, the Wolves took huge steps towards that culture.
Making the playoffs alone doesn’t mark the season as a success (although it helps) and losing in the first round doesn’t make it a disappointment.
This team is four years removed from winning 16 games, three years from 29, and last season the team won 31 games. For this team to make the jump it made in such a short amount of time is uncommon.
“I told the players I’m very proud of what (they) did,” Wolves coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game. “To get out of the hole that we were in, to win 47 games, to get into the playoffs after 14 years of not being in the playoffs, to do it in a very tight playoff race, to finish one game out of the fourth spot, it’s a major jump from where we were two years ago. We have to take all the things we learned this past season and we have to make a commitment to continue to improve, but I’m very proud of what this team did. It was not easy and they fought like crazy to get it done.”
The Wolves finished the season with a 47-35 record, their most wins since 2003-04. As you’ve heard a million times, that was also the last time the team made the postseason. This was with Jimmy Butler missing 17 games after undergoing surgery on a right meniscal injury.
Minnesota was 37-22 with Butler in the lineup (62.7 winning percentage). The Wolves were 8-9 without Butler. With Butler, simple math tells us the Wolves win 10.6 games, which would give them 49 for the season. That might have been good enough to earn a third or fourth seeding.
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But injuries happen, for every team, and that’s part of the game.
While the Wolves had plenty of proven winners on the team this season – Butler, Jeff Teague, Taj Gibson and Jamal Crawford. They also had players who needed real, pressure-packed experience to take that next step such as Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns. And with the Wolves clawing for the postseason down the stretch -- finishing with a 5-2 record including three straight to end the season -- they got exactly that.
“They’ve learned what it takes to get yourself to the playoffs, now us as a whole we have to figure out what it takes to whenever we get there,” Butler said. “No matter what seed we are, that’s what we’re expected to do. But like I said I’m proud of everybody, I’m happy for everybody that they prepared the way that they did, they went about the game as professional as possible and gave us a chance to win a couple.”
There were plenty of memories throughout the season, highlighted by the 112-106 overtime win over the Nuggets that clinched a postseason berth for the Wolves. It’s one of the better games you’ll ever see as a fan.
There was Minnesota’s Game 3 win over the Houston Rockets, the team’s first playoff win since May 23, 2004.
The team had two players represent Minnesota in the All-Star Game.
Of course, these are smaller picture things. But ultimately it’s the small pieces ultimately create the puzzle. Team building, and for Minnesota most of all, culture building, takes time. Becoming a winner, takes time.
“It’s a work in progress. We’re still working on it. It’s not something you get in a second,” Thibodeau said. “It’s what you do every day is what matters. It’s how you approach everything. We’ve made great strides, and we still have a lot of strides to make.”
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This is a roster that should get better naturally. Jimmy Butler and Jeff Teague are still in the primes of their careers. And the ceiling for Towns and Wiggins is as high as they want it to be. Those two are the keys to just how far the Wolves can go in the upcoming years. Both had their moments in the playoffs, and both had their struggles. And again, like injuries, that’s part of it. In the playoffs, teams throw different schemes at you and looks you’re not used to seeing. It’s how you adjust to that that separates the good players from the great players.
“Especially going through the experiences we had to go through this year, I’ve learned a lot especially in this playoffs,” Towns said. “You understand a little bit of the difference between regular season and postseason. We haven’t been there in like 14 years so there’s experience that needed to be garnered and we wanted to take that next step. We came up short tonight but we’re very confident in ourselves leading up to next year.”
The season is over for the Wolves, but this is a team that should have high aspirations for 2018-19. Hopefully this playoff run helped with that.