The Minnesota Timberwolves are betting big on a playoff run that may not come

The Timberwolves are planning to sell Jimmy Butler by winning.  They just may not be able to actually go out and do that.

Minnesota Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau talked to fans at the Minnesota State Fair the other day, and one quote stuck out: “The winning will take care of that”, in reference to Jimmy Butler’s impending free agency.

At first glance, this is a positive quote. In Thibs’ view, they’re going to win, and that will sell Butler on staying, and all will be fine.

But practically, the converse is true as well. If the Wolves don’t win, then they’re going to have an extremely hard time selling Butler on a return. If Butler, in turn, does leave, Jeff Teague presumably opts in to his $19 million in 2019-20, and the Timberwolves will give a well-deserved max contract to Karl-Anthony Towns, as well as some non-negligible amount to fellow restricted free agent Tyus Jones. Which, more likely than not, will put the Timberwolves over the cap with only nine players signed. They’ll have no way to replace a top-10 player in the league, and if this team wasn’t good enough with Jimmy Butler (As the assumption goes for this hypothetical), then they certainly won’t be without him.

Which means, then, that there’s an extraordinary amount of pressure on this year. The Wolves have raised the stakes on this year to where a bad roll could easily put them into NBA purgatory, where despite an elite player in Karl-Anthony Towns, they aren’t clearly good enough to consistently make the playoffs, but also not good enough to actually improve their team via the draft.

And this year, after an offseason that placed some faith in some odd, though not necessarily bad, places, like Derrick Rose and Anthony Tolliver, was not a great year to make that bet. Not only is history not on their side — last year they had to win a coin flip game over Denver to make the playoffs on the last day of the regular season — the predictive numbers aren’t really either.

Jacob Goldstein of, among other places, Nylon Calculus, has the Wolves at an 81 percent chance of making the playoffs this postseason. Which is actually not that bad. That’s the fifth best odds in the Western Conference, and eleventh league-wide. But making the second round is an entirely different story. The probability there drops to only 36 percent. So if that’s the cutoff between Butler staying and going, then it’s almost twice as likely that he leaves than he stays.

So whether they wanted it to be or not, this season is now the most important season for the Timberwolves since Kevin Garnett left, and they should play like they feel the pressure that brings.