Offseason grades: Timberwolves
NBA offseason grades:
Grading without a structure is dumb, so here is the structure:
Teams have goals, grades are a combination of what I think the teams are trying to achieve, how well they achieve it with the move and what the costs are. A-F grading where C is average means that most moves get Cs as most moves don’t end up seriously impactful. A small improvement is actually a C, not a C+ as every team is out looking to improve and the talent depth of the league has been growing meaning teams are better on average most years and standing pat is a C- move. If you were an A+ team coming in and you get a C- grade that doesn’t mean you are a C- team, it means you are an A team instead of an A+ team now.
The other note is that while most moves are Cs, there are also more C- and lower grades than C+ and higher. The reason is simple, the majority of great moves come from the draft, and a good chunk of the rest are things like ‘Lebron wants to play in your city, or with a guy you drafted 7 years ago’.
This is in stark contrast to how most grades are given out, here is one example of many from the 2021 draft class. Three total below average grades (DDR, Fournier, Graham) and every other signing is good to excellent, of course the opposite is closer to true looking back a year. Lots of signings either didn’t work or were not impactful and only a few were really notable.
Minnesota Timberwolves. The addition of Gobert is huge, he’s a high impact regular season player and much, much better and more valuable right now than Donovan Mitchell was. He can elevate mediocre guards, for example with Clarkson and Gobert last year on the court the Jazz were +12.3/100 in 2,000 possessions. With neither Mitchell or Conley they were still +6/100 in 350 possessions, +8.9/100 in 640 and +13.1 in 320 possessions the two years before that. Given that Minnesota is overpaying a mediocre PG as a starter, needs defensive help and managed to get the most efficient low volume finisher in the league to go with Ant, KAT and Russell is a large win. Their goal is obviously to make a much deeper playoff run than this past season and the first step to that is avoiding a top two seed in round 1. Their two playoff appearances of the last 18 years came as the 8th and 7th seed which is pretty much just a 1st round out in most situations. The ‘Gobert doesn’t play in the postseason’ exaggeration misses this point, the Timberwolves have made a move that could vault them into the top 4. They have a legitimate shot at the best record in the West next season if they can avoid injuries.
The price: The price was steep, trading away your future for the present is one thing, but the extreme cost of this deal makes any in season or even between season improvements difficult to impossible. They have no contracts to move who aren’t projected rotation pieces, they have no real assets left to attach to those contracts if they did and they have no cap room, nor ability to create cap room and are going to be deep in the tax to keep this team together which is already quite thin. If they are healthy I expect a top 3 seed, if not their lack of depth and ability to make moves could push them into the play-in. Grade B-. Enough positive outcomes to change the path of their franchise, heavily tempered by outcomes that return Minnesota to their earlier lack of trajectory.
Kyle Anderson. A move that needed to happen, at a fair price. They needed a wing but couldn’t afford one with fewer flaws, they can handle some of his flaws but also don’t need his passing so they won’t get full value from him. If his speed of play is a problem they don’t really have many options behind him. C borderline C+.
Overall Team Grade B-.
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