Thaddeus Young gives Wolves solid veteran presence

Editor's note: Second in a three-part series on the players acquired by the Wolves for Kevin Love

Believe it or not, Timberwolves forward Thaddeus Young isn't so old that he doesn't remember what it's like to be 19 and young (with a little "y") in the NBA just like new teammates Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine.

It just seems that way.

He begins his eighth NBA season on Wednesday in Memphis, yet just celebrated his 26th birthday in June. It's a juxtaposition that Young calls "kind of in between." It's also one that left many people asking Wolves basketball boss Flip Saunders why he'd swap a 2015 first-round draft pick obtained in the Kevin Love blockbuster trade for such an aged player, especially after Saunders obtained youngsters Wiggins and Anthony Bennett from Cleveland as the trade's two other pieces.

"They're acting like he's 29 or 30," Saunders said. "He's not, and he's a good player."

Saunders sought to include Philadelphia as a third team involved and Young as a third player received in return for trading away his three-time All-Star. He did so because he felt he needed a veteran presence at Love's power forward, and because he felt Young's athleticism and defensive activism would fit well on a roster remade by adding such players as Wiggins, Bennett and LaVine.

A veteran whom Bennett calls "The Boss," Young well remembers what it was like to be them, even if so long ago.

Oh, the things he has learned since the 76ers selected him 12th overall in the 2007 draft — five picks after the Wolves took a guy named Corey Brewer — after one collegiate season played at Georgia Tech. He entered the league as its second youngest player, older only than future superstar Kevin Durant.

Since then, he has played alongside such teammates as Andre Miller, Elton Brand, Jrue Holiday and Andre Iguodala on four playoff teams, including the 2011-12 Sixers who reached the Eastern Conference's second round before they lost to Kevin Garnett and Boston in seven games.

He also played for five coaches, five general managers and two ownership groups during those seven years in Philadelphia, during which he started as a small forward and ended up as a power forward of the stretch variety.

Young was forbidden from shooting three-pointers while playing for Doug Collins, and took 12 total during his final two seasons playing for him. He shot 292 threes with the shackles off last season while playing one year for new GM Sam Hinkie and new coach Brett Brown, a season in which his team was stripped to the studs and tied an NBA record by losing 26 consecutive games en route to a 19-victory season.

Through it all, he played befitting what Brown calls an "A-plus" athlete who is "elite" in the open court and never threw up his hands in resignation playing for a team whose better days will be long, long after he's gone.

"I mean, he's an athlete, a thoroughbred and I think his better days are ahead of him. What is he, 26, 27? I mean, c'mon. I think he's just scratching the surface of what he could grow to be."

Saunders compares Young, an 18-point-a-game scorer last season, to Antawn Jamison for the open creases he finds and the odd angles at which he can score. He's also a defender — a self-admitted "gambler" albeit — who creates what he calls "havoc" and finished third in the league in steals (2.1 a game).

Perhaps more importantly, he is a man who complied when Collins demanded he turn his attention toward the paint and who resisted the temptation to abandon ship last season.

"That's not me, that's not how I was raised," said Young. "I'm always going to be coachable and do what they tell me to do. If they tell me to run through a brick wall, I'm going to try it. I know it might not work, but I'll do it. … Last year was probably one of the most difficult things I've ever been through, but I got through it. I was the leader, the captain, so I continued to fight.

"Every night I felt like I was going into a gunfight with a knife, but I went and did what I could with that knife. At the end of the day, I left it all on the court."

Brown said he believes Young — undersized occasionally in power-forward matchups — can expand his game to become an efficient three-point shooter and a player who can rebound, push the ball and make plays with it in his hands even though he stands 6-8.

Indiana coach Frank Vogel calls him one of the league's fleetest runners at his position, right with Denver's Kenneth Faried, the L.A. Clippers' Blake Griffin and Detroit's Josh Smith, and a player suited to run alongside Wiggins, Brewer and Ricky Rubio.

"With the speed they have now," Vogel said, "I think he's perfect for them."

And that's what Saunders said he sought when he pursued Young to fulfill that third piece of the Love trade: the right fit.

He said he became convinced when the team added young athletes who'd complement Young's game. He said similarly gifted athletes make each other better, and he thought Young's NBA history made him the right guy to mentor 19-year-olds.