The definition of success is subjective, ephemeral. But in today’s sports zeitgeist, it’s becoming less so: “rings culture” dominates all, serving as the wall into which any nuanced conversation inevitably crashes: “But did they win?” Of course, each NBA team enters the season every year with the same goal: to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy. But only one team can every year, so does that make the other 29 failures?
The Minnesota Timberwolves present an interesting counterpoint: their fanbase is, no doubt, deeply disappointed this morning after a harrowing blowout loss in Oklahoma City, which means the team came up short of the NBA finals in devastating, decisive fashion for the second year in a row. On the other hand, they’ve made back to back Western Conference finals for the first time in team history, gone from league laughing stock to bona fide perennial contender, and have one of the most exciting young stars in basketball, 23-year-old Anthony Edwards.
Related: Would the NBA’s transatlantic expansion strip the soul of European basketball?
Edwards has fallen victim to a classic conundrum for a young, fast rising star athlete: disappointing people by not quickly enough becoming a thing he never asked to be. In his case, that’s “face of the league,” an idea foisted upon him almost instantaneously by an NBA public wooed by the guard who plays a bit like one Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Edwards’s popularity grew rapidly, due to his Jordan-esque explosiveness, propensity for highlight dunks, and sparkling charisma. The devil-may-care Edwards has spoken on the record, several times, about not being particularly interested in being the “face” of the NBA, a plight LeBron James (whose team Edwards recently sent packing for the season) says he empathizes with. “I understand,” James, who has served as the face of the NBA for two decades, told the Los Angeles Times recently. “I completely understand. There’s this weird energy when it comes to that.”
Charles Barkley recently made some somewhat controversial comments on the subject. “Don’t try and make Anthony Edwards the face of the NBA,” Barkley said. “You can’t give [the title of face of the NBA] to people. They have to take it.” It certainly seemed, in moments throughout the postseason, like Edwards was doing exactly that, wrestling the title from his elders inadvertently or otherwise. His dismantling of a Los Angeles Lakers team spearheaded by James and Luka Dončić, who sent Edwards and the Timberwolves home last season, was decisive and damned impressive, showcasing his newfound basketball maturity and growth as a playmaker. And while his team lucked out when the Warriors’ Stephen Curry was ruled out of the Western Conference semi-finals with a hamstring injury, you can only play the team in front of you, and Edwards & Co made quick work of Golden State, too.
The Timberwolves had lost a cumulative two games through two series until they ran into the freight train that is the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder’s historically great defense brutally exposed Minnesota’s flaws, and they were the first team to make Edwards look every bit of what he really is: 23 years old. It’s easy to forget when young stars come into the league after a single-year in college that, even five seasons into their NBA tenure, they’re still so very young. But Edwards is young, and while it was another whimper of an ending to his playoffs, the fact that he already has two conference finals runs and marked improvement as a player under his belt should serve as encouragement. He showed flashes of his newfound maturity, and flashes of the years of work left to reach his sky-high potential, in this playoff run. Edwards’s time will come. But it’s not here yet.
The Thunder are a young team, and they will probably stand between Minnesota and a place in the NBA finals for some time to come. But it would be wrong to place the blame for the Timberwolves’ playoff exit at Edwards’s feet. The team has a lot of existential (and financial) questions to answer this summer. For starters, there’s Julius Randle, the player Minnesota took a gamble on when they traded Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks last October. Randle, who has a checkered playoff résumé to say the least, had a rocky start in Minnesota, but rounded into form after the All-Star break and had a scintillating star turn in the first two rounds of the postseason. The conference finals, where he scored fewer than seven points in two games and looked lost for much of three of them, were a different story. Randle is on an expiring contract with a player option this summer, and the Wolves will have to take another gamble in guessing which version of Randle is to come, and if there’s a place for him moving forward.
Naz Reid, a beloved fan-favorite and former sixth man of the year, may have cost himself a pretty penny with his disappointing showing throughout the playoffs, but he’s still expected to forgo his bargain $15m player option and enter free agency this summer, another tough call for the Timberwolves to make. Nickeil Alexander-Walker (who, as ESPN is quick to remind us, is MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s cousin) is also a free agent this summer, and has likely earned himself a bit of a pay bump over the course of his stint in Minnesota. Then there’s Rudy Gobert, whose albatross of a contract would most likely be difficult to move, even with his multi-time Defensive Player of the Year bona fides. But he’s been a clunky fit with Edwards, is a general liability offensively, and was mostly played off the floor by Thunder. Tim Connelly, the president of basketball operations the ‘Wolves wooed away from Denver, has done a mostly bang-up job to this point in Minnesota. But if he wants to steward Edwards’s potential, he has difficult decisions this offseason.
No one wants to see their favorite team outclassed in the manner the Timberwolves were in Oklahoma City on Wednesday evening. And the summer ahead is a murky one for the direction of the franchise and its roster. But to go from the butt of every NBA joke, whose claim to fame, for many fans, was either alienating Kevin Garnett or passing, twice, on Stephen Curry in the draft, to a perennial championship contender with a budding homegrown superstar, is a win. Or, one might say, a success.
