Tom Thibodeau With Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine & Karl-Anthony Towns is Scary for the NBA
By Jason McIntyre
Tom Thibodeau, such a great coach with the Bulls from 2010-2015, sat out this season, but will be the next coach/President of the Minnesota Timberwolves. His GM will be Scott Layden, who is leaving the Spurs.
A defensive genius who learned at the altar of Jeff Van Gundy in New York and then in Houston, and later with Doc Rivers and the Celtics, Thibodeau might inherit the best young roster in the league.
Sure, they’re just a 29-win team, but their best players are Andrew Wiggins (21 years old), Rookie of the Year Karl-Anthony Towns (20), Slam Dunk champ Zach LaVine (21), and promising reserves like Shabazz Muhammad (23) and Tyus Jones (19).
The only player making real money on the roster is Ricky Rubio (three more years for $42 million), and he’s only 25 years old. Rubio is still a liability shooting (37 percent field goals, 32 percent on three-pointers), but he was 2nd in the NBA in steals (2.13) this past season. If you thought those Bulls defenses were long and annoying, the Timberwolves will be that – and younger – very quickly.
I’m not sure there was a better coaching opening than this in the league – no offense to the Lakers, who should fire inept Byron Scott – and you could argue it’s better than the one Billy Donovan took in Oklahoma City last year. Donovan might lose his best player, Kevin Durant, to free agency. Nobody on Minnesota is going anywhere for awhile.
The salary cap is going up. The Timberwolves will probably draft in the Top 10 again – they had the fifth worst record – and can you imagine if they got the shooter they sorely need? Jamal Murray of Kentucky probably doesn’t play the defense Thibs demands, but Minnesota was 29th in three-pointers made per game (5.5), 29th in 3-point attempts per game (16.4) and 25th in three-point percentage (33.8%). There could be several free agent SG possibilities – Courtney Lee, Eric Gordon, Arron Afflalo, Evan Fournier – but I’d sooner thrust Murray into the starting lineup from Day 1.
LaVine is still young and very turnover prone, but he’ll eventually be the team’s starting point guard. You’re set at SF and C with Wiggins and Towns for perhaps the next decade. Find a shooting guard and unearth a Draymond Green to play power forward and you’ve got a real contender in the West.