It was a special season for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
They achieved a 50-win regular season for the fifth time in franchise history. His 56 wins were the second-most in a season in team history. They swept a Phoenix Suns team that features one of the NBA’s all-time greats: Kevin Durant. They beat the defending champion Denver Nuggets in seven games to reach the Western Conference finals for the first time in 20 years.
The Timberwolves’ magical run finally came to an end after a 4-1 series loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals. While they fell short of their ultimate goal of a championship, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the Wolves moving forward.
Assuming the team stays together next season, the core pieces are there. Anthony Edwards is only 22 years old and a rising superstar. He has an excellent supporting cast around him. The postseason experience will help the Timberwolves prepare for next season.
“The West is going to be a monster next year, as it seems to be every year, but there were a lot of things we did well this year,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “Really proud of our guys for building another layer of foundation to get to where we’re trying to get to.”
This is the NBA Finals. And now that the young Timberwolves have completed their first deep playoff run, they now know what it takes to get there. As Finch and members of the team reflected on their season and what it will take to reach that next goal following the Game 5 loss to the Mavericks that ended their season, there were some common thoughts about what the next step will entail. .
Here are three things the Timberwolves will look to take advantage of next season:
As Rudy Gobert and Nickeil Alexander-Walker sat at the podium reflecting on the Game 5 loss and the Timberwolves’ season as a whole, both mentioned that the team’s mental toughness wasn’t always present during the loss to the Mavericks. Now, the Timberwolves showed mental toughness during the postseason, best exemplified when they rallied from a 3-2 series deficit to beat Denver.
But the level goes up a step with each playoff series. Alexander-Walker noted how some of the games came down to winning back just one possession. Simply doing a few different things here and there could have made the Western Conference Finals a drastically different series.
That comes down to things as simple as mental toughness and emotional control.
“It’s going to take a big leap, and it’s going to take constant failure and a mental battle to tune out,” he says, “to tune out the media, to humble yourself before the team, to do whatever it takes to win and this playoff series, these playoffs and the postseason as a whole definitely taught me more about what it means to win and not just really believe, but apply that belief,” Alexander-Walker said. “Applying that belief in your work and everything, but also owning that moment. “I think all of those things will influence how we grow next year and make the leap.”
Alexander-Walker believes it will be a big jump because the Timberwolves expect an even tougher road to the NBA Finals next season in a Western Conference loaded with talent from top to bottom. But the Wolves also hope to improve. Gobert said they haven’t come close to their potential.
While their goal was a championship this season, there is also value in the test of losing a difficult Western final series to a Mavericks team that was simply more prepared, mentally and physically.
Mike Conley said that sometimes experience is the best teacher.
“You have to go through this, you have to learn from your mistakes, you have to feel what we feel now,” Conley said. “…We all want to be better, and mental toughness is something that’s not easy to achieve overnight, but those lessons will help you.”
From Game 1 onward, the Timberwolves looked tired. It almost seemed like it took everything they had in the tank to get past the Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals. In a way it did.
There is no way to prepare for something you don’t know. The Timberwolves had not made it this far in the postseason. They are a team that is in great physical shape, but they didn’t know what it takes to play at full strength until June. It’s just a different animal training for playoff basketball.
Now they know exactly what it will take.
“We trained this year as if we were going to play 82 games, maybe one round of the playoffs,” said Anthony Edwards, who had mentioned his fatigue during the series. “We didn’t know we were going to go this far, so we didn’t train like that this summer. I know no one did, especially me.
“I think this summer is going to be huge for all of us because we know what kind of team we have and we know what we’re capable of, so we need to train like we know what we’re going to do.”
Karl-Anthony Towns said the Timberwolves did a great job taking care of their bodies all season, but the series revealed they’ll have to take it to another level this offseason. They didn’t know what it would take last offseason, but now they know and they’ll be ready for another run.
Finch said one of the biggest takeaways for the Timberwolves is simply how the level of preparation and execution increases more and more as you move further into the postseason.
The Mavericks were ready. They took shots when necessary. Its biggest stars shine in the most important moments. Meanwhile, the Timberwolves struggled to close out games and quarters. Untimely turnovers late in games cost them dearly against the Mavericks.
“I think in those first few games, just being able to close out the quarters better, especially the fourth. We really had a great opportunity in front of us,” Conley said.
The Timberwolves at times strayed from their defensive identity during the Western Conference Finals. Their offense, in turn, often stalled. The execution had to be at a higher level.
“It will be good for us to take advantage of this experience, just knowing the execution that is required at each level, which increases more and more,” Towns said. “Understanding the discipline that we are going to need if we want to advance deeply and reach the next level, which is the Finals… Attention to detail as well. And that goes with execution.”
Ultimately, this season was a learning experience for the Timberwolves. They made significant progress compared to a season ago. They had a special season and reached the Western Conference finals for the first time in 20 years. And they learned what it will take to get over the hump next season.
The Timberwolves are certainly confident they will get another chance next year as well.
“We’ll be back next year,” Edwards said.
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