The decision was neither rash nor shortsighted. Sam Mitchell, the interim coach of the Timberwolves, was ordering three of his young starters to the bench for most of the second half: Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Ricky Rubio. It was not so much a punishment as it was an opportunity.
“I thought the guys who played in the second half played hard — played together, played with a type of intensity and energy we needed,” Mitchell told reporters following Minnesota’s demoralizing 116-101 loss at Milwaukee on Friday. “I thought some of the guys in the first group didn’t play that way. And they have to understand, every single night, you have to earn it.”
Is there another NBA core more promising than this trio that was assembled by the late Flip Saunders? Towns, the 7-foot rookie of the year favorite, is rivaling Anthony Davis in the debate over which young star is the league’s best building block. Wiggins, the 6-8 swingman in his second year, is emerging as an excellent complement to Towns, in part because Wiggins shows little desire to be the No. 1 star. The athleticism and length of Zach LaVine, the 6-5 guard who has been the slam dunk champion in each of his two NBA seasons, creates the potential for endless mismatches as he tries to become a point guard.
“You don’t get to sleepwalk your way through 20-25 minutes of the game,” Mitchell was explaining on Friday, “and then decide you’ve got to play.”
The difficulties of rebuilding around young stars was illustrated earlier this season by Lakers coach Byron Scott, when he demoted first-year talents D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle to the bench. The public backlash implied that Scott had committed insubordination — as if he was sabotaging his team’s plan to invest in the future. From Scott’s perspective, he was coaching his potential stars constructively by forcing them to earn their minutes. He was insisting that they play with urgency and ambition and a sense of purpose.
Since Russell, 20, was moved back into the starting lineup after the All-Star break, he has averaged 19.9 points and 5.0 assists per game. On Sunday Russell contributed 21 points, 5 assists and 4 steals to the Lakers’ shocking 112-95 upset of the Warriors.
The job description in Minnesota is even more complicated. Rubio, at 25, is the Timberwolves’ most seasoned starter. Their top six scorers began this season with 10 years of NBA experience — three fewer than Tayshaun Prince, their 36-year-old teammate.
“The guys that didn’t play in the second half, after we pulled them out, hopefully they understand that there’s two sides on the court,” said Mitchell of his young Timberwolves on Friday. “You have to play both sides.”
There is only this far-away hope that they will understand and learn. There is no certainty.
“This is where I get kind of perturbed,” Mitchell was saying earlier this season. “The fans and the media, they want them to be the Three Amigos tomorrow.”
The point Mitchell was emphasizing is that his three top scorers — Wiggins (20.6 ppg), Towns (17.6) and LaVine (13.4) — are 21 or younger. Each is at the beginning stage of his NBA development. Altogether they are at Point A.
“They’ve got to go to B, C, D, E,” Mitchell said. “And then once they get to E, now they can skip some levels. But the media and the fans want them to start at A, and then to be at F, and then be at Z. Where we in basketball understand first they’ve got to go to B-C-D-E, and then after they get the basics, their talent is going to dictate them skipping some of those other steps.”
It is the potential to skip ahead that creates so much hope in Towns, Wiggins and LaVine. Their outrageous abilities incited laughter from Mitchell at this point in the conversation because he had so little in common with these prodigies he is now coaching during his own 13-season NBA playing career. Mitchell was the No. 54 pick of the 1985 draft — a third-rounder in those days — and didn’t reach the NBA until four years later. Upon arrival he was still doing it the harder way.
“For me I had to go A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H,” Mitchell said. “Because I had to, because I couldn’t skip those steps. I heard Jimmy Johnson say a long time ago: The superior athlete can make up on his mistakes by his athleticism. Whereas for me, if I made a mistake, I was done. Because I didn’t have the athleticism to correct it. So if I was in a bad position defensively, my man normally scored. These guys? They make a mistake, they’re so athletic that they can recover.”
What these players — Towns, Wiggins and LaVine in particular — have been learning during this brief time in the NBA is that their athleticism is a tease. Their talent makes promises that cannot be fulfilled in this moment. They are just beginning to learn how to convert their abundant instincts into consistent team play. The Timberwolves’ 20-43 record, fifth-worst in the NBA, is proof they don’t know how to win.
Mitchell is optimistic, and yet he also remembers being the older teammate in Minnesota to 22-year-old Kevin Garnett and 21-year-old Stephon Marbury. In 1999, midway through their third season together, Marbury was traded to the Nets because he wanted to be the leader of his own team. He would finish his career without ever having won a playoff series in his prime.
“Stephon couldn’t see it,” Mitchell said. “Everybody kept saying you’re the next Stockton and Malone, but Stephon couldn’t see it. And everyone kept telling him, like everyone keeps telling Wiggs, Zach and Karl. But they don’t see. They can’t see into the future.
“We have lived in the future. We have seen all of this before. So we know what they can do. But they just don’t think like that right now.”
Towns, Wiggins and LaVine have the potential to contend for championships someday. Right now, however, they are overwhelmed by so many details that slow them down. “In this league,” said Minnesota GM Milt Newton, “if you’re thinking about it, you’re late.”
Their hardware is as speedy as any in the league. It is their software that is struggling to catch up.
“I’m not saying a year or two years from now the light bulb don’t come on,” said Mitchell. “Karl has the talent to one day become a Hall of Famer. Andrew Wiggins can be a Hall of Famer. Zach LaVine can be in the Hall of Fame or make multiple All-Star teams. But they don’t see it. We see it and dream about it and get excited about it. To them, hell, they want to go downstairs to have breakfast and have shootaround. They just don’t see it. And Stephon never saw it. People couldn’t understand why Steph couldn’t see the Stockton-and-Malone (future). But he was 19 or 20 years old. He couldn’t see it.”
How successful might the Thunder be right now if James Harden had been willing to commit to winning championships in Oklahoma City alongside Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook? Harden has emerged as one of the NBA’s most explosive scorers in Houston. The choice he made has been validated. But is he ever going to return to the NBA Finals?
When so much young talent is gathered in one place, there is no telling what will become of it.
“I feel like I’m more energetic, outspoken,” LaVine said. “Andrew is laid back like there is nobody else, but funny as heck if you get to know him. KAT is fooling us all the time. It can be the middle of the game, he’s cracking a joke to you and it’s like, `Bro, we’re down by 2.’ But that’s KAT: He gets his work done, he works extremely hard, he wants to be great. And outside of that, you know, he is a regular 20-year-old. Very funny and a goofball.”
The personalities appear to work together constructively. This is why Mitchell and others are encouraged that the three young Timberwolves will bond eventually.
“I don’t think we are going to have anything like a rock band, where after they get their first gold album they all want to become solo artists,” Mitchell said. “Because their personalities are not like that. Karl is really fun to be around. Cracks a lot of jokes, always needling guys. Zach is the kid that’s always standing on the outside looking in, just laughing. Laughing at everybody. And Wiggs is just the type where you all can crack jokes on me all you can. He will laugh. He will get involved.
“If Andrew wasn’t 6-8 and he walked into the room, you probably wouldn’t even know it. And I’m not saying that in a bad way. I think with all the hype that has been around him since he’s been in high school, I really think he has got the best attitude. Because if he was wired in a different way? For some kids his age, with all of the expectations and they’ve been hyping him since he was in 10th grade, it probably would be too much. But because he is the way he is, he can handle it. If he was wired a different way, high-strung or got caught up in things and reading all that stuff, it would probably be too much. Most 20-year-olds couldn’t handle that. But the way his attitude is and the way he carries himself, I think he is wired the right way to be able to handle all of the expectations and the hype and everything that comes with being Andrew Wiggins.”
Wiggins, the No. 1 pick of 2014, will not face the burdens of outright leadership so long as he plays alongside Towns, last year’s top pick. With every game Towns expresses his potential by making two or three plays that inspire visions of his ultimate future. Maybe it’s an up-and-under move that blurs his black road uniform like one of the mutants in the X-Men movies. Maybe it’s his ability to make sensational one-handed catches look easy, as if wearing a first baseman’s mitt. Surely it is the blend of ball handling, shooting range and athleticism that enabled Towns at 7-feet to upset 5-9 Isaiah Thomas in the skills competition at All-Star Weekend.
When Mitchell wants his rookie center to try something new, the coach understands that he will probably have to listen to alternatives from Towns. “I can say, ‘Zach, what do you think about this?’ ‘Coach, whatever you want me to do,”’ Mitchell said. “Andrew Wiggins, I want you to do this.’ ‘OK, coach.’ Where Karl would be like, ‘OK, coach, can I do it this way?’ And then you have to say, `Well, Karl, no – the way is this way, because you have to do it for these reasons.”’
By no means was Mitchell complaining. On the contrary, he was pointing out that the differing points of view may make it possible for Towns, Wiggins and LaVine to fit together eventually like jigsaw pieces.
“In order for us to be really good, players are going to have to accept their roles,” said Newton in reference to all of his team’s young talent, including third-year center Gorgui Dieng and guard Shabazz Muhammad, the No. 14 pick of the 2013 draft. “If you want to win, then you may have to take a step back. Because when you have all these players fighting to be the top Alpha dog, that is when you have trouble. So the biggest thing for us is stressing winning. That is the No. 1 priority. And if you really want to win, understand that there is a role that you are going to have to play, and you’re going have to play it to the best of your ability.”
“Definitely all three have got different personalities,” said Prince. “But all three need to work on the same thing, and that’s how to approach every game the same way. If you’re not scoring, how can I impact the game and approach it differently? Young guys kind of give into that. If they’re struggling offensively, they hang their head. I’ve been in plenty of situations where I don’t get opportunities that I like offensively, so I have to find different ways to impact the game, and I talk to Wiggs frequently about it.”
In 2003-04 Prince, a second-year forward, was helping the Pistons win the NBA championship when Wiggins was a 9-year-old in Toronto. After a 96-93 loss at Portland in January, Prince could be seen talking to Wiggins quietly in the visitors’ locker room for five steady minutes. Wiggins had shot 3 for 18 from the field that night, but Prince was telling him that the most important plays had been a series of offensive rebounds that the Wolves had conceded in the fourth quarter. Then Jerry Zgoda, the Timberwolves beat reporter from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, arrived to ask Wiggins about those very plays.
“One little play can change the momentum of the game, especially in the fourth quarter,” Prince said. “I was talking about that and then the reporter asked him about it, first question.”
Everyone can see. But it’s so much easier to recognize the errors than it is to correct them.
The mentors in Minnesota have been winnowed down this season. Andre Miller, 39, and Kevin Martin, 33, agreed to midseason buyouts. Garnett, 39, hasn’t played since Jan. 23 and may not play again. Prince is the lone player currently in Minnesota’s rotation with more than five years of NBA experience. Newton notices him pulling aside his teammates in team huddles or on the court, in between plays, to point out something that could have been done better.
“You have to continue to have that winning mentality,” Prince said. “Because if you don’t, you start building losing habits. So we stay on them about it a lot. They are great guys. They listen to everything we tell them. The most important thing that we can do is to get on them in that moment, just when things happened in the game.”
“I would like you to tell it to me there and then, so it doesn’t keep happening,” LaVine said of his mistakes. “I basically want to get it over with quick. So if I’m doing something, let me know so I can try to fix it.”
Will Mitchell return as their coach next season, without the interim tag? Is Newton certain to return as GM? Will Prince be back? Will Garnett retire? Will yet another young star arrive in the lottery?
None of these questions can be answered now.
“It is hard when you have that many weapons, because you’ve got to get everybody involved even if they’re not the one who finishes the play,” said Rubio, who himself was the subject of trade speculation last month. “Sometimes it’s hard for a young guy learning that. I know there is a lot of pressure, but like I am telling them, you’ve got to enjoy the process. Time flies, and you’re in your fourth or fifth season already. You’ve got to enjoy every second.”
On Saturday, less than 24 hours after he had benched Towns, Wiggins and Rubio, Mitchell saw something that no coach in Minnesota had ever seen before. His Timberwolves were converting a franchise-record 68.4% from the floor. Towns was 14-for-18 for his 28 points with 7 assists and 3 blocks. Wiggins (10-for-14) had 26 points and 6 assists. LaVine (9 for 12) added 21 points, and Rubio missed three shots while finishing with 16 points and 10 assists.
“We all know we’re better than that,” said Wiggins of their disappointing performance one night earlier.
They generated 36 assists, their high for the season, in a 132-118 win over the visiting Nets. The lessons of Friday had been embraced on Saturday. And then the young Timberwolves moved on, because tomorrow was another promising and unpredictable day.
Ian Thomsen has covered the NBA since 2000. You can e-mail him here or follow him on Twitter.
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