The national basketball media is in Indianapolis this weekend to cover the NBA All-Star Game, which, strangely, features two Timberwolves players and the Wolves head coach.
Dear NBA, meet the Minnesota Timberwolves. They’re a lot different than what you remember.
It’s NBA All-Star weekend — and the national media will need notes on this remade franchise, best in the West and the best story in pro basketball.
Here’s a cheat sheet for the national media members, to help them catch up on the best story in pro basketball:
• The Timberwolves, sometimes referred to as the “Wolves” or “former laughingstocks,” are located in Minneapolis. Which is in Minnesota. Yes, it’s cold. Don’t make fun of us or we will write passive-aggressive anonymous social media posts about you.
• No, the Wolves are not a coastal or massive-market franchise, so, yes, you can continue to obsess over teams that will get your stories more clicks, such as the Lakers, Clippers, 76ers and Knicks. The Wolves, at 39-16, have a better record than all of them.
• You were almost all wrong about the Rudy Gobert trade, and you were wrong because you thought that the modern NBA has to be all about guard and wing play.
The pendulum is always swinging when it comes to sports trends. As soon as small lineups became a trend, someone was eventually going to try to capitalize on that trend by building a dominant front line. The Wolves, with Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid, have a dominant front line.
Admit this, too: You assumed the Gobert trade was a joke because the Timberwolves made it, even though the individual who closed the deal, Tim Connelly, assembled the team that won a title in Denver.
• Your Karl-Anthony Towns slander was overdone, in a classic case of blaming an individual for a franchise’s failings.
Towns has been an outstanding player his entire career. This year, he’s an All-Star who has cut down on his arguing with refs and has received only one technical foul. He is the second-best player on the team leading the West and has been uniformly unselfish in welcoming another prominent center to the team and supporting Anthony Edwards as he becomes the face of the franchise.
• The website VegasInsider lists Edwards as the 13th-most likely player to win the NBA’s MVP Award this season. The players listed ahead of Edwards: Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, Jayson Tatum, Jalen Brunson, Kawhi Leonard, Donovan Mitchell, Kevin Durant, Domantas Sabonis and Steph Curry.
Jokic and Embiid might be the best players in the league, but the Nuggets are easing their way through the season, and MVP is a regular-season award. Embiid is injured. Tatum is the best player on the NBA’s best team.
Everyone else either is not as good as Edwards or isn’t driving his team’s success the way Edwards is.
I don’t think Edwards is the league MVP at this moment, but if he continues to excel, play virtually every game and lead the Wolves to a No. 1 seed, he should be much higher than 13th on anyone’s list. Maybe even in the top three. He’s top 20 in points (26.3 per game), shots made (473), free throws made (285) and steals (63). The national media should wake up.
• Be nice to Finchy. That’s Chris Finch, the Wolves coach, who will run the Western Conference All-Star team.
This is not Gregg Popovich, who uses interviews to make himself as unlikable as possible and usually succeeds in that pursuit.
Finch coached in Europe. One court he coached on was made of artificial turf. He worked his way through the NBA ranks, making friends and allies everywhere he went.
He lives in downtown Minneapolis and has become a familiar figure around the city. And he’s already one of the two best coaches in franchise history, along with Flip Saunders.
It took Finch his whole life to become an overnight success. He’s worth your time this weekend.
• Don’t be surprised if the Wolves pull away in the West and set themselves up for a strong playoff run. They have only made it past the first round once in 34 previous seasons, in 2004 when they made it to the Western Conference finals. Twenty years later, whether anyone around the league is paying attention or not, they have a deeper, better team than their only previous success story.
The Clippers have the NBA’s best record since Dec. 1, and the Wolves just went to Los Angeles and toyed with them.
The Wolves are an excellent team, and they don’t need rumors about trying to acquire LeBron James to be relevant. Someone might want to mention them this weekend, right after that exclusive insider report on what LeBron had for breakfast.
Giannis Antetokounmpo had 32 points and was an assist away from a triple-double, Damian Lillard added 25 and the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Atlanta Hawks 110-102 on Saturday to earn a spot in the NBA Cup championship game.