If we're talking about the best-performing team this season so far, maybe we have a lot of options: Jazz singing, the sun rising, the 76ers steadily rising, the Nets scrambling to catch up... But if you're going to pick the worst team of the season, the answer is already here.
Although the Rockets have recently played a cool 13-game losing streak, they have not been able to close the gap between them and the Timberwolves — the Timberwolves have also won only one of their last 14 games. After a 19-point deficit to the Phoenix Suns on March 1, the Timberwolves' win rate dropped to 39.307049 percent, surpassing the Tampa Bay Pirates (who just won the Super Bowl this year) to top the competition from hundreds of teams in the North American Sports League and the lowest ever winning percentage of any existing team.
Some people say that their record is so bad because they are in a bad situation, but in fact, because they have given their first-round picks this year to the Warriors in the Russell deal, they don't even have a reason to swing it out — even if their record is really the worst in the league, they only have a 40.17% chance of keeping their first-round pick protected by the first three picks. And even if they keep the pick, considering that the Timberwolves have picked Wesley Johnson (4th overall), Derek Williams (2nd overall) and Chris Dunn (5th overall pick) in the last decade of the high draft, it's hard to imagine them using this pick to complete the salted fish turn.
The young Edwards didn't know the cruelty of life, so he maintained the optimism characteristic of a rookie, and after a loss in February, he said: "We know how to compete, but we don't know how to win yet." By the time we learn how to win, we'll all be able to solve the problem. ”
Learning may be something that can be learned, but it must not be possible to wait. But that's when a new question arises for the Timberwolves' young players: Who should they learn from?
Considering that a year and a half ago, Rubio was the MVP of the FIBA World Cup, he looked like a good teacher, and perhaps that's why the Timberwolves invited him into the palace twice.
It's hard to say he's a player who doesn't know how to win, but in the face of endless defeats, the chicken soup veteran who has repeatedly reiterated to the media that "when we lose, we don't lose mentally" and "we need to be fully committed to every game, starting from Towns, Edwards and me", like an ordinary middle-aged social animal crushed by the pressure of work, shows a little bit of fatigue and frustration: "I know young people make mistakes, but we always repeat the same mistakes." On the offensive end we had poor shooting choices, and on the defensive end, we lacked communication. We repeat those mistakes over and over again, which means we don't learn anything. I don't think we're on the right path. ”
Rubio was right this time, the Timberwolves' young players learned nothing, but they weren't a special case of the worst team in North American history. The Timberwolves are a team that never learns from mistakes. For more than a decade, the Timberwolves have been like a ship that sails in the dark on the sea late at night, with neither a compass nor a lighthouse in sight. They may think they are moving forward, but to outsiders, they are just spinning around and never seeing their destination.
Since Kevin Garnett was traded to Boston, they have tried to rebuild again and again, tearing them down again and again. Al Jefferson is gone, Kevin Love is gone, Downs is the third generation core they have set up, the Timberwolves have sent Jimmy Butler for him, traded D'Angelo Russell for him, and their only gain is the current 7-29 report card. With Tom Thibodeau now once again proven himself in New York to be a head coach who can lead the team to a beautiful record, and Butler also took the Heat to the Finals last year, the control variable method seems to have found its problem. But there is still no way to go before this problem is solved.
Two years ago, Ryan Sanders was proud to succeed Thibodeau, and now he's been beaten by the Knicks in Thibodeau, but we all know he's a backhand. With the team's two best players playing only 90 minutes together this season, his coaching style, which is committed to making players feel engaged and belonging to the team, seems to have had little effect on the team's performance. In the NBA, many coaches can lead talented teams to victory, but few coaches can gain respect with a team that is not well-organized. So we can also understand that when Chris Finch took over the Timberwolves, many in the industry thought he had taken over what might have been the worst mess in history.
It's hard to say the Timberwolves are a team lacking talent, but the news about them all sounds terrible: Russell is missing at least Until March 25 due to a knee injury; Malik Beasley is the Timberwolves' biggest surprise this season, averaging 20.5 points per game, plus a 45.5 percent shooting percentage, but he was also banned from the league for 12 games due to possession of marijuana and threats from gunman last year; Towns' mother and several family members have died in the epidemic, and even he himself was infected with the new crown virus at one time. We don't know exactly how this "once dead" experience will change the life of the 2015 show, but we do know that it brought the Timberwolves' already bad season to an end.
And what's worse is that we can see that even if they are all healthy and not in trouble with a ban, the Timberwolves are not a competitive team. Their roster is full of NBA fringes who won't be surprised even if you leave the league next season, and in the high-level indicator of box plus/Minus, the Timberwolves only have Towns, Russell and Beasley above the league level, and the young newcomers Edwards, Okoji and Culver who have high hopes by the Timberwolves management are even below -5.
Is this a surprising situation? In fact, if you know anything about the Timberwolves' team history, you will be accustomed to these kinds of days. Despite having a home stadium called the Target Center, the Timberwolves always operate off target. On the Timberwolves' all-time top ten scoring lists, you'll see the names of mediocre players like Doug West and Tony Campbell, because good players are always going to leave the icy Minnesota soon.
The Timberwolves had formed the original three-headed monsters of Garnett, Marbury and Gugliotta in the 90s, but after Marbury and Gugliotta had a conflict, the Wolves first sent Gugliotta to appease Marbury, and finally failed to deal with Marbury's surging personal desires, losing their wives and folding their soldiers; they were sent off for five years for their yin-yang contract with Joe Smith, and for giving Troy Hudson and Tranton Hassell a contract above their value level. The Timberwolves failed to keep Kassel and Spreeville; in the end they even traded Garnett and didn't get enough in return.
Remember the analogy I played earlier about dark sailing? Zhang Dai, a literary scholar in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, also happened to have written an encyclopedia called "Night Sailing Ship". In order to let more people know some common sense, in the preface to the book, he told a small story.
Once upon a time, there was a monk who stayed on a night boat with a monk. The monks talked loudly, the monks were afraid, and they slept with their fists and feet. The monk listened to his words with flaws, but he said, "May I ask Xiang Gong, is it one person or two people?" The scholar said, "It's two people." The monk said, "Is this Yao Shun one person or two people?" The scholar said, "Nature is a person!" The monk smiled and said, "Say this, and wait for the little monk to stretch his feet." ”
When you lack basic knowledge about success, you can often only laugh at the generous house. Throughout the history of the Timberwolves, the timberwolves' rot is top-down, from head to toe. They always fail to pick good players, lose money on trades, and then take the salary space to sign mediocre athletes to fill the squad list, waste the precious youth of the excellent geniuses they occasionally select, and finally forge their team culture by losing.
Thirty years of Hedong, thirty years of Hexi, the mighty in the alliance came and went, and only the Timberwolves were consistently rotten. Philadelphia also experienced an era when it was difficult to win, but they knew that they were on their way to success by shouting "believe in the process". The Timberwolves, on the other hand, have been in the NBA for 31 years but have won just two series changes of management and coaching countless times, but have never demonstrated their ability to form a competitive team.
They've had a brief run of glory in the draft — yes, for Garnett, seven consecutive years to stop in the first round is certainly a painful memory, but for the Timberwolves, eight consecutive years in the playoffs is already a glory. Now it seems that the 2003-04 season that made the Timberwolves suck up countless fans in China was a beautiful accident for them, and it was an SSR limited draw that only once in 31 years.
The only good news for the Timberwolves is that, despite so many misfortunes and setbacks, the winners they have chosen retained the backbone of some old-school players, thinking of reviving their former glory. In a recent interview, Downs, 25, still expressed a desire to stay here: "I'm a loyal person and I would love to end my career at timberwolves." I want to make a career here, I want to make a legend. ”
He probably forgot that when the greatest saga in Timberwolf history, the eternal Wolf King, recalled his youth in Minnesota, all he was left with was a sigh and the famous phrase "loyalty sometimes hurts you."