BDL 25: The fun, probably still terrible, Timberwolves

The NBA offseason has brought many changes to rosters, coaching staffs, and the list of championship contenders. As we draw closer to opening night, it’s time to move our focus from the potential impact of each offseason event and onto the broader issues that figure to define this season. The BDL 25 takes stock of, uh, 25 key storylines to get you up to speed on where the most fascinating teams, players, and people stand on the brink of 2015-16.

You know it’s a weird year when what might be Kevin Garnett’s final campaign is maybe the third-most intriguing storyline of a basketball season in Minnesota.

What’s weirder still is that all this intrigue probably won’t produce an end result all that different from every season since Garnett was the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.

Had they not just reached a buyout agreement with underwhelming 2013 top pick Anthony Bennett, the Timberwolves figured to be the first team in league history to feature three straight No. 1 overall picks, but we’ll just have to settle for reigning Rookie of the Year Andrew Wiggins and ROY favorite Karl-Anthony Towns.

Mentioned on the short list of potential breakout stars in 2015-16, Wiggins seemed to gain steam in each passing month of his rookie campaign, ultimately averaging 23.3 points, six rebounds and four assists in the month of April. So, yeah, Minnesotans have every right to be optimistic about the uber-athletic 20-year-old, especially if he ever starts converting 3-pointers at even an average NBA rate.

Towns is the reward for an abysmal 2014-15, when the Wiggins-led Wolves ranked dead last in points allowed per 100 possessions (109.6) and fifth from the bottom in points scored during those same possessions (99.8). A 16-66 record provided Minnesota more Ping Pong balls than anybody in the draft lottery, and for the first time in franchise history, their logo was sealed in the envelope everybody coveted.

The 6-foot-11, 250-pound Kentucky product is a prototype for the position-less future of the NBA. Towns possesses the size and skill to space the floor offensively and shrink it defensively, which makes him the ideal understudy for Garnett.

“He’s my mentor,” Towns told NBA.com of his time working with Garnett in L.A. this summer. “Everything he knows, and countless years he’s been playing this game at a high level, (I am) just trying to garner information from him every day. Learn how to be a better leader, how to be a champion, just to be a true professional.”

It’s fitting the return for Kevin Love last summer — Wiggins, Bennett and Thaddeus Young — now simply amounts to Wiggins and Garnett, who was acquired from Brooklyn for Young at the trade deadline. Spanning three decades, Garnett, Love and Wiggins are the only stars Minnesota basketball has ever known. And pairing the old with the new represents a circle of Timberwolves life not lost on anybody.

What’s more, the loss of Love left the Wolves bad enough in the first year of yet another rebuild to land Towns, who might finally form the binary star system with Wiggins that Garnett never saw in so many seasons riding solo in the Twin Cities.

And let’s not forget about Ricky Rubio, a brilliant playmaking point guard once destined for stardom before a series of injuries. The Spaniard is still only 24 years old, and is among the league’s most creative ball-handlers when healthy. He will have more weapons at his disposal, too, so long as he recovers from ankle surgery.

The Wolves will also roll out an under-25 crowd that includes the reigning slam dunk champ (Zach LaVine), an erstwhile No. 1 prep recruit (Shabazz Muhammad) and a Senegalese center who dropped 22 points and 21 boards in his third career start (Gorgui Dieng) — all of whom enjoyed varying degrees of success last season.

Fill out the roster with the 2015 Final Four MVP (Tyus Jones), the NBA’s oldest player (Andre Miller) and the most terrifying man left in the league (Nikola Pekovic), and you better have Minnesota on your regular League Pass rotation. Kevin Martin will be there, too, for those who prefer more traditional basketball.

The question isn’t whether the Wolves will be fun. They will be a blast of athletic youth and aging couth. The question is whether they’ll be any good, since they’re not all that different from the team that rode a 12-game losing streak into the summer.

In fitting with the wildness that is the current state of basketball in Minnesota, this untamed roster will be steered by an interim coach, Sam Mitchell, who mans the bench so long as Wolves coach/president/co-owner Flip Saunders battles cancer. Since being fired as head coach of the Raptors in 2008, Mitchell has served as an assistant in New Jersey and Minnesota, never winning more than 24 games. His Toronto teams consistently ranked among the league’s worst defenses and weren’t much better offensively, although they played with pace and space — again, fun.

Of course, Mitchell also played alongside Garnett in Minnesota before Towns was born. The former was a 32-year-old vet when the latter made his debut on Nov. 3, 1995, and Garnett once credited Mitchell for instilling the mentality that’s made him one of the most maniacal competitors in NBA history — “stand your ground, this a man’s league” — to which the current Wolves coach countered in The Boston Globe:

“I don’t care what anybody says, there’s not a finer human being that I ever met in my life than Kevin Garnett,” said Mitchell. “There’s not a more gentle man or a teammate or a person than Kevin Garnett. Kevin Garnett does things for people that they don’t even know he did for them.”

With that, the two will try to mold the next generation of Minnesota kids into men, with Garnett playing the Mitchell to his Wiggins — all as Saunders, the Wolves’ coach of past and present, pulls the strings from his front office. Time is a flat circle, and I’ll watch it again, even if it all ends in the same 26-win result from 1995-96.

Previously, on BDL 25:

Kevin Durant is back to score at will and dominate headlines

What the heck will the Dallas Mavericks even look like?

Paul George tries to reclaim stardom and Indiana’s contender status

Will DeMarcus Cousins and the Kings even make it to January?

Can the Golden State Warriors be that perfect again?

Are the Cleveland Cavaliers going to price themselves into oblivion?

The Grizzlies know exactly who they are, and that might be enough

Kevin Garnett’s last run

Are the Knicks building something or just biding time before a blow-up?

Paul Pierce, journeyman

Russell Westbrook searches for an encore to an overwhelming season