Watching The Minnesota Timberwolves, Who Can Still Afford To Have Fun

Here is one play, from the first quarter of a November game between two teams unlikely to make the playoffs: Andrew Wiggins stood on the right wing, at a spot from which he has been initiating all manner of havoc this season—sewing-machine stepbacks, spinning drives, dunks that look CGI'ed. Knowing Wiggins' penchant for going from triple-threat position to divebombing-pterodactyl position in an instant, the Orlando Magic had two defenders in his vicinity, which left space on the court for the rest of the Timberwolves.

Wiggins found Ricky Rubio when he stepped through some of this space to the center of the lane. Rubio caught the pass mid-hop, and then shuttled the ball behind his back as soon as he landed, toward the left block where it landed in the hands of Karl-Anthony Towns, who elevated for a two-handed slam.

The sequence happened so quickly that it seemed almost as if you were watching its individual components simultaneously. Wiggins' pass split the double-team at the same time Rubio's snuck behind his waistband, and at the same time Towns capped the series with the bucket. It looked like a photographic collage.

It was not only the speed and tidiness of the play that created this illusion, though. The Minnesota Timberwolves are perhaps the most talent-blessed young collective in the NBA and quite possibly the inheritors of the Western Conference crown, although they are not really even a good team yet (6-8 on the year), so anyone watching them watches them in two ways.

The first is the way all basketball is watched: as a contest full of real-time gambits and counter-gambits, advantages to be leveraged and disadvantages to be minimized. The second is a way unique to up-and-coming teams, wherein no motion exists on its own. Each player and tactic is scrutinized for relevance beyond the particular evening, for a place in the rosy future, and so even successful plays are not just celebrated but cataloged in snapshots, so that they might be examined for lasting worth.

This second kind of watching threatens to overtake the first. The Timberwolves are every amateur GM's favorite team. Hoops prophets the world over advise their televisions: they need a guard with a better stroke, a stretch four, a more modern system. Such thinking is fun enough, and backseat team-building is an honest pillar of American fandom, but it also misses at least part of the point. This Minnesota squad is not only a seedling that, treated with the correct mix of fertilizer—and, to drop the metaphor, analytic enlightenment and bench depth—will grow into a mighty 60 game-winner. It is also, right now, one of the oddest and most endearing conglomerates in recent NBA history, worth watching at least once in a while if only for the mere momentary pleasure of seeing the crazy things that they do, when they realize that they can.

Let's start with the three perpetrators of that piece of quick-hitting wonder in Orlando: Wiggins, Rubio, and Towns. Or Wiggins-Towns-Rubio or Rubio-Towns-Wiggins or Towns-Rubio-Wiggins. They'll probably settle into the clear hierarchy of Towns-Wiggins-Rubio eventually, but for now they coexist in an idyllic equilibrium that precedes real expectation. They are allowed to be weird, for now, because they are not supposed to be anything else just yet. And so they are weird as all get-out.

Rubio, the goofball avant-garde playmaker, is positively entrenched compared to the other two but still a mystery in the broader NBA landscape. What we know by now is that he is a certain type of savant. He has the air of a student who gets Einstein's quantum theories but struggles to keep a B in basic algebra. Advanced rotating defenses, to Rubio, are child's play; he flicks the ball across the court or between reaching defenders from all manner of angles and with all manner of gestures, always with exquisite ease. Hand him an open elbow jumper, though, and he trembles.

Towns (15.8 ppg, 9.8 rpg, 2.4 bpg), some 15 games into his NBA career, has no such counterintuitive flaws. He possesses a deft little left-shoulder jump hook, a sure drop-step, a knack for boxing out, a smooth stroke, honed defensive instincts, hands like catcher's mitts—the list of credits goes on. Towns is one of the most bankable big man prospects recently, but it's maybe more impressive that he is also Minnesota's most dependable presence on the court right now, a walking resumé standing seven feet tall.

Wiggins (22.3 ppg) has spring-loaded shins and iffy handles, the defensive expertise of an eight-year vet paired with a fairly one-note offensive concept. His sheer gummy athleticism, paired with a couple pet moves, lets him get by more often than not. He drives to the bucket in a mess of elbows and knees, looking like loose paper blowing down the street, and then all of a sudden he is high in the air unspooling some Rube Goldberg floater or, increasingly, just stretching his long arms and dunking over the head of whichever poor soul tried to jump with him.

Minnesota's foundational trio would be wonky enough on its own—the three represent about the widest possible variety capable of being grouped under the term basketball talent—but everything surrounding them somehow compounds the weirdness tenfold. There is Kevin Garnett, of course, the franchise's prodigal expletive-sage, who every night hits exactly one 17-footer, grabs exactly five rebounds, and spends the half-hour of game-time when he's not on the court glowering from one of the foremost bench seats with an intensity unmatched by even the most psychotic helicopter parent, sweat streaming from his beard after a quarter of inactivity.

There is, on the more mellow side of things, the ageless point guard Andre Miller, who after a week's worth of DNPs is always ready to hop up, give the quads a quick stretch, and teach these kids how folks fed the post when Clinton was in office. There is Kevin Martin, who…well, who doesn't really fit the "Timberwolves are cool" thesis. The less said about Kevin Martin, the better. It appears that Tayshaun Prince is also on the roster. They are all there, ostensibly, to model behaviors and tutor and mentor and otherwise conspire to improve the grab-bag of iffy talent that the Wolves have compiled after recent lottery seasons: Zach LaVine, Shabazz Muhammad, Gorgui Dieng, Adreian Payne, Nemanja Bjelica, Tyus Jones.

These Wolves draw comparisons to the nascent versions of the Oklahoma City Thunder, which is a compliment in the long term and a dodge in the present. Like the Thunder, they will likely swap out a healthy portion of their secondary pieces over the coming years in search of the right supporting cast for Towns and Wiggins. Even Rubio may leave town before the playoff runs begin, if the team decides to flip him for a more conventional ringleader. The current bunch, in time, will take on the archival sheen of Kevin Durant in a Sonics jersey.

This is all the more reason to watch them now, while they're figuring it all out. Enjoy the collision of history and future that happens every night as Minnesota loses by eight or ekes out a five-point win over a team they should beat by twice that, as happened against Philadelphia on Monday.

Wiggins whirls around Garnett screens, the 39-year-old still willing to execute shoulder-bumps of questionable legality for the incubation of a success he won't be around to enjoy. Rubio devises an angle for an entry pass to Towns despite a defense sagging into every observable passing lane, and Towns works an up-and-under as if he is guarded not in an game by a tenured NBA center but instead in practice by a balding assistant coach wearing a whistle and orthopedic sneakers. Muhammad and LaVine make good on their promise for a few minutes, and entertain visions of the whole young core staying intact, growing together, ascending the Western Conference a season or two from now in a surge of goodwill.

It won't happen that way. The Timberwolves will be better soon, but they'll also be different. There will be pragmatic moves to make, rifts to deny, and contingencies to consider. They will lose games they should win, and no distant goal will provide a silver lining. Right now, though, they are in the pocket between the bad times and the good times. It's a giddy little purgatory that they're working through, and that they may miss when it's gone. It is already leaving. Catch it while you can, and before they get to work on the drearier business of winning.