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Minnesota entered the Western Conference Finals last spring with an air of confidence. The Timberwolves had fallen short at this same stage a year prior, but that was part of the process. Now they were back, lessons learned, and ready to take the next step to reach the franchise’s first NBA Finals. Five games later, they were sent home by the Oklahoma City Thunder in embarrassing fashion. The Wolves dropped three games in OKC by 15, 26 and 30 points. “They kicked our (butts),” Anthony Edwards said this week. It was the first time an Edwards-led Wolves team had been so thoroughly dismantled over the course of a playoff series. Minnesota’s star guard spent the immediate aftermath of his team’s elimination admiring Oklahoma City’s defensive connectivity. Wolves coach Chris Finch noted that perhaps veteran floor general Mike Conley could win a championship someday as a coach or general manager. Because if what Minnesota had just been blown away by was the standard required to lift a trophy, the Timberwolves weren’t nearly as close to the ultimate prize as they’d previously thought. But there’s no sense in wallowing in pro sports. Rudy Gobert noted it’s “always motivation” when you watch a team finish in a position you thought you could have been in. There’s a process for moving forward. Step 1: Acknowledge what took place. “The reality is we lost 4-1 and (it was) a lot of kind of lopsided losses,” Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said. Step 2: Figure out how to fix it. That was Minnesota’s offseason emphasis. The feelings remain raw, but as time passes, it becomes easier to look at the failure analytically. “We knew certain things that happened in that series that we had to look to try to counter,” Finch said. “It’s a little bit more strategic than it has been emotional.” It seems everything Minnesota did this offseason — intentionally or otherwise — can be traced back to Oklahoma City. “We really focused on some of the areas where we thought we were exposed,” Connelly said, “and our guys took the challenge.” Ball-handling Minnesota committed a combined 44 turnovers over Games 4 and 5 of the West Finals. Oklahoma City scored 19% of its postseason points directly off opponents’ giveaways. Finch emphasized the importance of taking care of the ball leading up to and throughout the series. But the Wolves turned the ball over on nearly 15% of their possessions throughout the season, 11th most in the NBA — not something a team can fix with the wave of a wand. “When you get to that point in time, your fatal flaws rise to the top,” Finch said. “We just have to be better in a lot of little areas and habits — certainly ball control, if you will; turnovers were too high. And a team like that just kind of feasted on it, and they were able to flip the game and, therefore, flip the series on us pretty quickly.” Decision-making certainly had to improve, but Minnesota’s roster simply didn’t feature enough adept ball handlers. If you can’t dribble, you can’t hold up offensively against high-pressure defenses such as Oklahoma City’s. With that in mind, Edwards, Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo and Jaden McDaniels have all specifically mentioned ball handling as one of their offseason focuses. Pace Denver and Indiana both pushed the Thunder to seven games in their respective playoff series. In the conference semifinals, the Nuggets scored 10.7% of their points via the fastbreak. Indiana’s number in the NBA Finals was 11.7%. In the conference finals, Minnesota scored just 7% of its points in transition. Consistently playing half-court offense is a losing strategy against the Thunder. But Minnesota’s transition frequency was 27th in the NBA last season. The Wolves never ran consistently, forfeiting easy buckets that can be so valuable — especially against the league’s top defenses — in the process. The Wolves are slow by nature. It’s not instinctual for most of Minnesota’s players to run the floor. But they’ve tried throughout camp to engrain that habit into their minds in the pursuit of fastbreak points. The simplest way to beat a great defense will always be not allowing it to get set. Everyone has the license to grab a defensive rebound and go, with the exception of Gobert. His instructions are to give the ball to Mike Conley, who can look to make a hit-ahead pass to one of his teammates sprinting up the floor. Finch would love if Minnesota were a top-10 team in transition frequency this season but admitted a jump toward the top 15 would be a massive improvement. Chemistry The Thunder are mocked as “cornballs” for the way they handle postgame, on-court interviews. Whoever is in front of the mic is surrounded by a hoard of teammates. Everyone barks in unison when the questioning is complete. Maybe it is dorky, but it’s also an example of Oklahoma City’s bond. Edwards noted the most important thing he has learned in recent years is that teams that go deep in the playoffs are “together.” “Like, they really care about each other,” he said. “It’s easy to say, ‘We brothers,’ and act like it.” But can you live it? Edwards lamented Wolves players not attending one another’s youth camps in the offseason, and noted the importance of building early camaraderie. On the eve of training camp, Minnesota went out for a team meal to discuss goals and connect. “We’ve got to be together. We’ve got to be a team,” Edwards said. “We can’t wait until the all-star break to try to become a team. We’ve got to do it now.” That would give the bonds enough time to strengthen to an unbreakable point. When Oklahoma City was getting its teeth kicked in by the Wolves in Game 3 in Minneapolis, a mic’d up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was shown calmly explaining to a teammate the ways in which the Thunder didn’t deliver that evening, and how they’d fix it moving forward. Oklahoma City came out two days later and nabbed a series-defining Game 4 victory at Target Center. The Thunder never lost their way. “When you go through some adversity, when you go through tough moments and good moments, too, with a group of guys, it builds something. It creates something,” Gobert said. “It creates habits, an automatism that we’re finding each other, knowing how to space for each other. Defensively, knowing how to talk to your teammate, how to push your teammate, who your teammate is. “These things, when you’re in the Western Conference Finals and it’s Game 5 and you’re going through some adversity, that’s when you need that. That’s when that shows. When everything goes well, obviously, not as much. Last year, I think that’s what separated OKC from us, and that’s what separated even Indiana. I thought Indiana and OKC were the two closest-together teams.” Approach Naz Reid felt the Timberwolves let themselves down against the Thunder. “We were prepared properly,” he said. “I just think we didn’t come out there with the right energy and intensity.” Well, they did one time, for Game 3, a 42-point Minnesota victory. The Timberwolves were on fire that night, executing on offense and flying around with maximum effort and pressure on defense. That was their winning formula. But they couldn’t replicate it. Minnesota’s defense in Game 4 fell off, and the Thunder scored 128 points to grab a much-needed road victory. “I think it points to the inconsistency we had in ball pressure, ball contain,” Finch said. Two years ago, consistent excellence in that department defined Minnesota. But last season’s team never quite established the repeatable things it could lean on night after night. The talk throughout training camp centered on re-establishing a defensive identity and being difficult to play against. That’s who Oklahoma City was from Day 1 of last season all the way through Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Even in the most difficult of times, the Thunder maintained their backbone. Minnesota will aim to do the same starting Wednesday in Portland. “We went 17-4 in the last stretch (of the regular season). So we kind of built some momentum,” Reid said. “But having that throughout the season, how they did, you obviously could see what that does to a system, a team, an organization.” It’s how you claim a championship, something for which Minnesota remains in relentless pursuit. “Fingers crossed, we think it was a really productive summer across the board,” Connelly said, “and we’re more prepared than ever to take the next step.”
