Wolves

Reusse: In these modern Timberwolves we see parallels to the team of 20 years ago. No way it can go so badly this time, right?

Two decades ago, Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell were fresh off success. More was expected, but you’ll recall that Spree got to fretting about feeding his family.

By Patrick Reusse

The Minnesota Star Tribune

October 23, 2024 at 2:01AM

The Timberwolves of 2004-05, led by, from left, Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell, held promise but flopped. (CARLOS GONZALEZ/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The Timberwolves started the franchise’s 36th season on Tuesday night vs. the Los Angeles Lakers, 17-time NBA champions, as long as they count the five won by Johnny Kundla’s Minneapolis Lakers from 1949 through 1954.

The site of the second game of the TNT twinbill was Crypto.com Arena, which was Staples Center from 1999 to 2020, and with a crowded schedule featuring the Lakers, the Clippers and the NHL Kings.

The Clippers were always the third choice when it came to assigning dates and starting times, but now the Lakers must gaze 13 miles to the southwest with envy toward the Intuit Dome.

That’s the new $2 billion arena with the Clippers as the main tenant, since it was financed by team owner Steve Ballmer — estimated worth, $122.8 of those billions.

You don’t suppose he’d like to get his mitts on a big-league ballclub in the Upper Midwest?

OK, enough of that. We have our Timberwolves to worry about, as they face a very rare challenge for this franchise: high expectations.

In contrast, their business partners in the basketball world, the Lynx, started with low expectations, and only five minutes of overtime futility prevented them from winning a championship.

The forecast for the 2023-24 Timberwolves was to avoid the 7-to-10 play-in portion of the postseason and perhaps win a playoff series for the only time other than in 2004.

It turned into much more than that, as the Wolves landed the third seed in the West at 56-26 and won two series — a four-game blowout of Phoenix in the first round and an epic seven-game elimination of defending champion Denver in the second round.

The 2004 team was the West’s No. 1 seed at 58-24. Those Wolves also won two playoff series, and then lost in six games to the Lakers in the Western Conference finals, mostly due to Kobe and Shaq anchoring L.A., partially due to guard Sam Cassell (the Wolves’ No. 2 weapon behind MVP Kevin Garnett) being hobbled.

Wally Szczerbiak, an adept scorer, had played only 28 games in that regular season and also was slow to return in the playoffs.

Now Wally would be back for 2004-05. This was primetime Garnett. The influx of Cassell, turning 34, and Latrell Sprewell, 33, had made all the difference a season earlier — and they looked as if they had enough left to do it again.

Get your tickets early, folks. This could be the run to the Finals.

The preseason kicked off with Sprewell’s complaint about not getting a hefty contract extension. His quote about needing to “feed my family” became so notorious that as I was typing his name into a search (for his birthdate) 20 years later, that phrase came up when the name “Latrell” was finished.

Cassell said he also would like a new contract, although not with the same severe attitude as the mercurial Sprewell.

As it turned out, Sprewell would play in 80 games and Szczerbiak 81 for the 2004-05 Wolves, while Cassell was limited to 59. Garnett was great again, but somehow it never worked.

There was a memorable home game with Phoenix on Feb. 2, when the Wolves lost 108-79. They lost four more in a row after that.

Flip Saunders was in his 10th season as coach, working for basketball boss Kevin McHale, Flip’s buddy dating back to their days as Gophers teammates.

McHale fired Saunders on Feb. 13 and took over as coach. There was no friendship for those two after that.

Glen Taylor, the Timberwolves owner then and now, said during a long interview in February:

“I let Kevin talk me into firing Flip. That was my worst mistake as the owner of this team.”

Your response immediately might be, “How about signing Joe Smith to the under-the-table contract that cost the team four No. 1 draft choices from 2000 to 2004?”

Let’s just say that Taylor took the fall for that one, getting a nine-month suspension from Commissioner David Stern.

The 2004-05 Wolves were 25-26 when Flip was fired. They went 19-12 with McHale to finish 44-38, but they missed the top eight for the playoffs. It was the start of a 13-year playoff dearth that included the never-to-be-forgotten David Kahn Era.

His first slogan was “United We Run,” which fit well for the customers running away from Target Center.

BUT, now our Woofies are back starting a season with high expectations — heck, with title aspirations — a mere two decades later.

And guess what? No chance for a 2004-05 repeat. KAT’s gone, and that’s fine because they got two very good ones, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, in his stead, and the Wolves took care of Rudy Gobert’s contract before tipoff Tuesday.

It might take coach Chris Finch — around long enough now to be “Finchy” — 15-20 games to figure out what fits with all these players, so don’t panic if there are a few early bumps.

Go to Target Center, crack out the credit card and feed your family, because as stated here recently, this team has only one major problem:

Too much talent.