Michael Jordan changed the NBA. Hot take, I know. But I’m not talking about bringing the sport to the masses, creating a generation of 2 guards that imitated him, or his iconic fadeaway in game 6 of the 1998 NBA finals. He changed the way that people so often measured greatness in the NBA. After MJ, the primary metric to measure greatness was how many championship rings a star player has.
Winning championships has always been a part of different legends legacies. But it didn’t use to be the overriding discussion ender that it so often has been in today’s conversation. You couldn’t compare Elgin Baylor and John Havlicek and say that Havlicek was better because of all his rings. Wilt vs Russell was a real discussion despite the fact that Russell had eleven rings to Wilt’s two.
But since MJ ended his time with the Bulls by winning six championships in his final seven seasons with the team (yes I count 1995 and you should too), it’s just rings rings rings. It’s become the predominant way to compare one great to another. After Kobe Bryant won his fifth championship in 2010, when asked what it meant to him, Kobe replied with “I’ve got one more than Shaq.”
Discussions in the NBA universe revolve around it. Even when there’s a conversation about a totally unrelated topic, it often comes back to rings. Who needs to adjust to who? Well, if Player B has a ring and Player A does not, then Player A needs to adjust because Player B knows how to win. A disagreement about how a coach should respond to a situation? Whoever has the most rings knows best.
(On a related note, I cannot stand Inside the NBA. I feel like it used to be a lot more relevant and less farcical in the 2004-2010 range but maybe I’m just smarter than I used to be.)
It’s gotten to the point that when an aging veteran chooses a mediocre team that will give him real minutes over a championship contender that will ride the bench, that’s the news story.
LeBron has been frequently ridiculed for his subpar 3-6 record IN THE FINALS, never mind that he’s now gotten there ten times.
Are we supposed to believe that Hakeem Olajuwon and Chauncey Billups were better performers when the lights were brightest because they both have better NBA finals winning percentages?
I could go on and on. But what does this have to do with the Timberwolves? Only one Wolves team has advanced past the first round, they’ve almost never been in the championship discussion. Well, the reality is that the rings dogma has permeated the Wolves front office.
Of course platitudes will always be served when any pro sports team talks about winning a championship. Gersson Rosas can’t be faulted for that. But the championship or bust mentality is more than just a mere talking point for Rosas. It’s his approach to almost every transaction. Rather than trying to construct a good team that can compete in the Western Conference, Rosas is trying to construct a championship team.
Now, it’d be fair to wonder what’s wrong with that. Is that what every front office should be doing? But the reality is that it’s a lot more difficult to construct a championship team than a good team that can be expected to qualify for the playoffs and occasionally advance past the first round. Championships require taking more risks, going all in on star players, and making sure the key players on your team are more or less on the same timeline for the peak of their careers.
It’s why Rosas traded Robert Covington for a younger player like Malik Beasley and a draft pick. There’s no doubt who the best player in the trade was, but Rosas was trying to better align the timelines for the key players on his team. It’s why the Wolves basically punted on 2020 entirely by adding a bunch of journeymen that can’t shoot threes and then instituting a style of play that requires everyone to shoot a bunch of threes. They didn’t want to be good this year, in hopes that they could acquire a top draft pick that could either provide a player with high upside or prove to be a valuable trade asset.
I’m not so much saying that if Rosas wants to build a championship contender that these are the wrong moves. In fact, I think they’re the right ones. But I also think we need to be realistic about what we have in the Minnesota Timberwolves. We have a team that will never be a free agent destination. Aside from Kevin Garnett, there is no meaningful player in Timberwolves lore. We’re not a large enough market to justify consistently spending into the luxury tax.
There are certain realities facing small markets in the NBA that isn’t true in the MLB, NFL, or NHL. It is much more difficult to build a consistent championship contender. Maybe you can catch lightning in a bottle and make a run. When that happens, it’s much more likely to be a run to the conference finals than to the championship.
That’s not to say that everything is doom and gloom. The truth is, the Wolves could build a consistent contender, and it’d be easier to do if that was the goal instead of championships. We saw the Atlanta Hawks do it from 2008-2016. The Grizzlies were able to do it from 2011-2018. The Blazers have been at it since 2014. Yes, the peak for each of these runs was a conference finals appearance. And what’s wrong with that? Sounds pretty great to me.
The Heat may be the team to disprove this theory every 15 years or so (like the 2004 Pistons before them, the 1989-1990 Pistons before them, pretty much any team from 1974-1979 except for the 1977 Blazers) but the reality is in order to win an NBA championship you need a top five player in the NBA. And the best way to do that for a small market franchise is to draft one. Like the Cavaliers did with LeBron James. Like the Spurs did with Tim Duncan, and then Kawhi Leonard. Like the Milwaukee Bucks are trying to do with Giannis.
Rosas knows this, so he’s trying to get as many bites at the apple as possible in the draft. But that’s a very painful way to build a team. It may not mean Sam Hinkie 76ers levels of tanking, but it will mean choosing years in which you’re not trying to win as many games as possible. It will mean trading players that could be valuable parts for a contending team for younger players or draft picks. It will mean not re-signing good players in restricted free agency because of the fear of tying up cap space. It will mean doing all of these annoying things even when you have a great talent like Karl-Anthony Towns on the roster.
Towns is not likely to go down as a top 25 player in NBA history. He’s unlikely to ever be the best player on a championship team. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t amazing. Championships aren’t everything. Memphis built a team that made the playoffs eight years in a row around Marc Gasol and Mike Conley. Gasol was a tremendous defensive player, but Towns is even more gifted offensively. He’s playing in the perfect era for a big guy with his kind of range. If he is surrounded by competent defensive players that have some track record of success in the NBA, it means the Timberwolves will have a playoff team that has an actual chance of advancing to the second round of the playoffs.
Is that so wrong to ask for? Because there’s a good argument to be made that if the goal is to win an NBA championship, maybe Rosas should trade KAT now. Or, and I know this sounds crazy, maybe we could just try to put a good team around him. One that is designed to make the playoffs.
The idea that there is not value in a season without a championship is madness. Let’s leave that mindset to deranged Kobe stans and pretentious Celtics fans. There is so much to be said for just being in the playoffs. Wolves fans understand this better than most. Just trying to be a playoff team can be a lot of fun.
We may get a glimpse of this approach in the 2021 season. Since the Warriors own the Wolves pick, there’s no incentive for them to lose games. But it’s something we should be trying to do every year that we have someone like Towns on the team. I have watched a lot of Timberwolves basketball over the last 20 years. For so much of it, whenever I showed up to Target Center I was there to watch the visiting team play basketball. It would be nice, if at some point, the Wolves could commit to the present instead of trying to sell us on a future that will never come to pass.
Anything Was Possible 
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