Hardwood Paroxysm Presents: What does your team need?
The Timberwolves got the Andrew Wiggins they wanted, but they still need a point guard, a center, a …
By Steve McPherson (@steventurous)
Minnesota didn’t make a big splash with a free agent signing, trade or by waiving a player, but shortly after a bunch of people decided they could bring up the idea that Wiggins might be a bust, Wiggins made a leap and suddenly started looking like the player the Wolves expected to get.
Of course, this growth spurt for young Master Wiggins has not really coincided with any change in fortune for the Wolves in terms of win-loss record (although they have now managed to snap the 15-game losing skid they were on and added another victory besides). It’s impossible to understate how much of this is due to the losses of Ricky Rubio, Kevin Martin and Nikola Pekovic early in the season. Minnesota lost 60% of its starting lineup, and that starting lineup has at times been 80% rookies and second-year players, including one — Zach LaVine — who was widely thought to not even be ready for the NBA at his more natural position on the wing, much less at point guard, where he’s played most of his minutes this season.
The roster moves they’ve made to accommodate these injuries, though, have at times seemed Dadaist. In need of a center to spell Gorgui Dieng and a point guard to take pressure off LaVine and the well-traveled Mo Williams, the Wolves signed 6-7 power forward Jeff Adrien. When Adrien turned out to be the best rebounding and defensively-minded frontcourt player on the team, fans cheered but the Wolves let him go in order to avoid having to guarantee his contract for the rest of the season.
After Adrien’s release, the Wolves signed 7-0 Serbian big man Miroslav Raduljica, which at least seemed to address the need for someone to backup Dieng. But Raduljica’s averaging 5.3 minutes per game, just a minute more than the barely-used Glenn Robinson III. Instead, Minnesota has leaned on Robbie Hummel, who has at times been both the team’s best point guard and center, to give you an idea of where they’re at.
Why won’t they use Raduljica? Why won’t they go get a point guard? Why do they keep hanging on to Robinson when they clearly need game-ready players? You can ferret out basketball reasons for these things (Radujica might not really be in game shape; it’s hard to get a point guard to learn and run the offense better than anyone already on the team at this point; they may see Robinson as a Shabazz-type player who will blossom eventually), but the cynical reason is that the Wolves simply don’t want to win too many game right now. Yes, it’s possible they could get better players or at least better fits, but doing so would cost them a lot — both in terms of actual dollars right now and in terms of looking down the road.
The writing is on the wall for the Wolves this season. They can either spend a lot of capital on trying to paint over it or rewrite it, or they can simply live with it, collecting players as placeholders to stave off the kind of significant injuries brought on by overwork while guaranteeing a decent shot at the lottery.