NBA basketball first came to the state of Minnesota in 1948, when the Minneapolis Lakers were founded and joined the NBA, with the likes of iconic white dudes George Mikan and Vern Mikkelsen (I also had not heard of him) leading the way. They stayed in Minneapolis for 12 seasons and managed to win the Finals in 5 of them (1949, 1950, 1952–1954). That’s right, the NBA’s first dynasty happened in Minnesota, the self-proclaimed “State of Hockey” (I’m convinced that not one non-Minnesotan has ever referred to Minnesota as that). Unfortunately, 1954 was the last time a Minnesota basketball franchise has won the Finals. Despite their success on the court, the team wasn’t doing so hot financially, which to led the owner, Bob Short, considering other cities as a destination for the franchise. The Brooklyn Dodgers had just moved to Los Angeles in 1958 and were making a lot more money since the move, so Short and the Minneapolis Lakers packed their bags and went out West and settled in Los Angeles, leaving Minnesota void of an NBA team until 1989.
The worst part about this (okay, maybe not the worst) is that the franchise continued to call themselves the Lakers in Los Angeles, a city with no lakes. Minnesota has over 10,000 lakes and makes sure to let everyone know on their license plates. That name makes tons of sense here and makes zero sense in Los Angeles. Sure, it’s a great name, but LA needs a more relevant identity. Los Angeles fans actually credit their team for the 16 titles won by the Lakes, even though 5 of those came in Minneapolis. That would be like Twins fans being proud of their 3 World Series titles, despite the first one being won by the 1924 Washington Senators (the team that moved to Minnesota and became the Twins). It doesn’t make any sense. Okay, I’m done with my rant.
Fast forward thirty years, and you have your Minnesota Timberwolves. The year is 1989 and this season the team actually played at the Metrodome and despite going a horrendous 22–60, the Timberwolves set an NBA attendance record with an average of 26,000 per game (!). Playing in a dome that can seat up to 63,000 as opposed to a typical 20,000 seat arena may have played a role in that, but still! No one can ever take that from us! Unless, of course, Mark Cuban gets fed up with the measly 21,000 seat American Airlines Center in Dallas and demands the biggest arena in NBA history. Until then, the Timberwolves will always have that going for them.
I decided to write an oral history of the Timberwolves when I recently saw a reddit post on r/timberwolves and the question was asking fellow Timberwolves fans what their favorite memory as a Timberwolves fan was. The responses made me want to roll up in a ball and cry. By far the most popular response was KG’s epic game 7 win over the Kings in round 2 of that postseason.
In that game, KG finished with an absurd 32 points, 21 rebounds, 4 steals, and 5 blocks in a win that sent them to their first and only Conference Finals, where they got send home by an undeniably more talented Laker team that was running out the Shaq-Kobe duo for the last time. This was easily the peak of the Timberwolves, as it was the only season (out of 28) in which they ever won a playoff series (and they won 2!). Other then that, their history has been composed entirely of lottery appearances (20) and first round exits (7). So far, it’s not exactly a history I’ll be telling my grandkids about.
The other popular response to the reddit question was a Kevin Love game-winning 3 against the LA Clippers in a regular season game in 2012. Anytime one of your most memorable team moments came in a regular season game in a season where your team did not make the playoffs, chances are you are following a depressingly incompetent franchise. These are the Minnesota Timberwolves I have come to know and love. It’s been mostly a frustrating, unfulfilled experience as a fan.
In their 28 year history, the Wolves have gone just 878–1370, which is a winning percentage of .391, which is dead last of any NBA team, with the next worst being the Clippers at .399. In his column about the NBA draft lottery karma rankings last week, Bill Simmons said, “If you were trapped on a desert island and could watch only DVDs of one NBA team since 1990 for entertainment, Minnesota would be your 30th pick out of 30.” That one really hurt. I always knew our beloved T-Wolves were bad, but I didn’t realize we were THAT bad. For comparison, the San Antonio Spurs come in at first with a lifetime winning percentage of .624. I did some further research and I actually found out that not only is the Wolves win percentage the worst in the NBA, it is the worst in all four professional North American sports leagues. It’s been that bad! It’s been a short and sad history riddled with mistakes and misfortunate. There are times where I have felt like the 12 year old version of myself could have run the team better than some of our GMs have. I wish I could say it has been filled with ups and downs, but it’s really been just downs.
Anyway, here’s how the Wolves ended up where they are today.
The Wolves were one of two expansion teams in the 1989–90 season, along with the Magic, and things got started pretty slow for them. For their first six seasons, the team peaked at 29–53 and never had much going for them. The Wolves finished dead last in the 1991–92 season and had the best odds at winning the Shaquille O’Neal lottery, which would have been an absolute franchise changing moment for them, but in typical Wolves fashion, they slid down to the 3rd pick and settled for the most hated player in the history of college basketball: a white guy from Duke named Christian Laettner. I wasn’t alive at the time to be upset about this, but this would have been a tough recovery for me. I mean, look at this guy!
To nobody’s surprise, Laettner’s scoring abilities were unable to get the Wolves out of the lottery, so they found themselves there yet again in 1995 and landed the 5th pick, where they drafted some skinny high schooler from South Carolina named Kevin Garnett. Garnett was still incredibly young and raw in that first year, leading to his nickname “The Kid” and the Wolves missed the playoffs yet again.
After that, starting with the 1996–97 season, the Wolves finally got introduced to this crazy tournament called the playoffs! It took a few meetings for them to wrap their heads around the idea of still playing games after the regular season was over, but the time had come! It was an exciting time for a relatively new NBA franchise, but that excitement began to wear down after first round exit after first round exit. The Wolves made the playoffs every year from ’97 to ’03 and managed to lose in the first round every single year, only ever winning 2 games twice in that stretch. KG got the reputation of someone who could pour his heart and soul into the game over the course of the regular season, but by the time the playoffs came, he would be burned out. Duncan, on the other hand, who was Garnett’s rival power forward, had won 3 titles and 2 MVPs in San Antonio by this time and seemed more capable of conserving his energy for the postseason. Duncan had made this a one sided debate.
After yet another disappointing playoff exit in ’03, the Wolves’ front office traded for guards Sam Cassell and Latrell “I have a family to feed” Sprewell, which resulted in what was possibly the best trio in the NBA that season. The team went 58–24 that season, good for 1st in the Western Conference and being a title contender for the first and only time in franchise history. KG led this team in every single statistical category, something only done by LeBron, Pippen, and Dave Cowens. As I mentioned earlier, the Wolves won a playoff series for the first ever time and followed it up with a second one a round later, helped by an all-time KG performance. They burned out a round later in 6 games to the Lakers, with no help from Sam Cassell’s back injury which limited him the whole series. With that season over, so was our short lived run as a contender. Sprewell refused a contract extension because he “had a family to feed” and Cassell was never the same after ’04.
The team promptly went back to the lottery in ’05 and has yet to escape it. Cassell and Sprewell were both gone by 2005 and after that, Garnett never had enough talent around him to make it back to the playoffs. Garnett was an all-time talent, but he ultimately was only as good as his teammates were. We found that our for sure in 2008 when he won a title in Boston with Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. When he doesn’t have to worry about doing EVERYTHING for a team, he can simply focus on playing great D, moving the ball, and most importantly, talking shit.
After subsequent trips to the lottery, it was time for the Wolves to move on from KG so in 2007, in a blockbuster deal, they traded him to Boston for Al Jefferson, Jonny Gomes, Sebastian Telfair, Gerald Green, Theo Ratliff, and a 1st round pick. This was a move that was supposed to reset the franchise so that they could rebuild and return to the playoffs in a few years with a young core. That did not happen. Despite nailing a draft day trade by scoring Kevin Love in the ’08 draft, the Wolves managed to fuck up, and I mean really fuck up, every single draft from 2009 to 2012. In ’09, they drafted not one, but two point guards directly ahead of Steph Curry. One of those guys is now playing in Australia and the other just had his first season shooting above 40% this most recent season. In 2010, they had the best lottery odds and slid down to 4th and took Wes Johnson, who lasted two years with the team and never shot better than 40%. In 2011, they took Derrick Williams, who some thought would be better than Kyrie Irving. Williams lasted less than three years on the Wolves and has now settled into a role as a 12th man on the Cavaliers. In 2012, they didn’t have draft pick because they traded a pick for Marko Jaric in 2005 and finally had to give it up. That’s exactly how you fuck up a rebuild. In 3 consecutive drafts from 09 to 2011, they missed out on Curry, Paul George, and Kawhi Leonard and came away with one point guard that can’t score.
Due to their series of draft blunders, the Wolves were unable to build anything of substance around Love and by 2014, he got tired of playing for lottery teams and demanded a trade. Fortunately, that summer, LeBron decided to return to Cleveland and wanted a third all-star to join him and Kyrie, so the Cavs and Wolves agreed on a trade that would sent 2014 1st overall pick to the Wolves along with Anthony Bennett and more in exchange for Kevin Love. This was their second full-reset in less than 7 years. This trade resulted in the Wolves having the worst record in the NBA in 2015 and because of that, they landed Towns with the 1st pick in the 2015 draft.
After a long decade of draft mistakes and trades gone wrong, the Wolves have finally found themselves in a position to potentially contend for the next decade. They messed up the Kevin Love situation in just the right way so they would be able to turn it into two franchise cornerstones. One of them is one of the youngest scorers to ever reach 4,000 points (along with LeBron, Carmelo, and Durant) and the other is the only guy in NBA history with 2000 points, 1000 rebounds, and 100 3s in a season. There was truly never been anyone like Towns. He’s a special player and I can’t wait to watch him for what I hope is the next 15+ years.
It’s going to be a long climb out of being the worst team in the history of North American sports, but with 21-year-old Towns and 22-year-old Wiggins leading the way for the Wolves, hope is on the horizon. It’s been a long decade of waiting and “maybe next year!” for Wolves fans, but this is the first year since the ’07 KG trade where I feel like there’s legitimately an above 50% chance for them to make the playoffs. We’ve been suffering for over a decade now and at this point, I’d be delighted to even see us get swept first round by Golden State. I believe in you guys! Kind of.
