 In my opinion, the Minnesota Timberwolves are the most intriguing team for the 2023-2024 season. And guess what? I'm a believer in them. I mean, to an extent, I don't think they're about to win an NBA championship or anything like that. But I think that the over under for them right now is 43 and a half. And I think that they can be a lot better than that. Now, Timberwolves fans, before you get super excited because Kenny Beachman is on the bandwagon, I do want to admit, I make videos like this every single season during the off season. Like, these are the teams I'm excited about. These are teams I'm not excited about. And I have missed a ton. Last year, I made a video about the two teams that got left in the dust by their contemporaries. The first team was Chicago Bulls. They're pretty good on that. They were a 41 team last season. And the last team, the next team, I said, hey, don't expect them to be good this year. Was the Miami Heat? Yeah, they weren't great in the regular season, but they made an NBA finals appearance. So I'm just saying just because Kenny Beachman, I think the wolves going to be better. Don't mean that that's even close to being a reality. But let's talk about the things that make me think that they could be better than people anticipate. So we all know last off season, they made a huge huge decision. They went all in. They went all in on a roster that wasn't close to being amazing. But that's okay. Maybe. I guess the time will tell. They traded all the first round picks, plus some young players to bring in Rudy Go Bear. And you're one of the Rudy Go Bear experiment with Carthony Towns and Ethny Edwards did not go well. I mean, it was good enough to make a playoff appearance, but that wasn't what the expectation was. Again, you traded all the draft capital and everything to just end up basically in the same spot you were pre-Rudy Go Bear. It was not pretty. I remember the trade going down and just we making videos asking who the heck were they bidding against to give up all of that? Danny Ains, finesse. And that has nothing to do with the talent level of Rudy Go Bear, but just like all of that. And again, I'm a big Rudy fan. He's one of the best rim protectors we've seen in the last 10 years. He's gonna go down in history as one of the best rim protecting centers ever. He's gonna be a Hall of Famer, but that was a ton of capital to give away when you already had a center on the roster. You traded for a center when your center, this ain't all NBA. Anyway, the trade happened so we don't wanna digress on it too much. We gotta think about the future now. We have to try to accept the fact that trade happened and how can they be better? Y'all know I don't be having a script when I write these, so we gonna be all over the place. There are a couple different reasons that make me a believer in the Minnesota Timbers. The one that's above all is Anthony Edwards. And this is actually a weird time because I was gonna make this video regardless, but as I'm recording this video an hour ago, Team USA won against Team Germany and Anthony Edwards was a man. And that's two rosters with a lot of NBA talent. You know what I'm saying? It's not like they're beating up on some team that don't have NBA players. They wanna get Franz Wagner, Mo Wagner, Dennis Shroud, Isaac Banga, Daniel Tice. Anthony Edwards dropped 34 points closed out the game and he was the best player on the court. And we talked about this on the Kenny Beecham podcast, the Kenny Beecham podcast, go check it out about how there are certain players that in the Feeba Ball for the USA that are standing out from me and those players were Anthony Edwards and Austin Reeves for different reasons. I'm not saying that Anthony Edwards has been the best player on the court every single one of these games because that's not true. There's just so much talent on the team. Some days it is Tavis Halliburton. Some days it's Anthony Edwards. Some days it's both and you kinda saw that today. So he's not always the best player on the court, but boy, his impact is always felt. Whether it be hitting clutch shots to close the game or getting clutch steals to close the game against Spain like he has been everywhere and doing exactly what you want. Like when I watched these international games it's not just about representing the country as a fan because that meadow don't mean much to me, but it's about, okay, who's using this offseason to be the better version of themselves? And I'm seeing that in Anthony Edwards. And that's saying a lot because last year he made an all-star appearance. I think the next jump is happening. Now, I don't know if that means super starting because in my opinion, there's only a handful of superstars and all of basketball, but he looks really good and there's nothing for me to believe that he won't be dramatically better than he was last season. And it's also been this evolution. And maybe I'm reading into this a little bit too much because that's what we do in the offseason. We got nothing else to do. We looking at NBA schedules, which we will talk about when we talk about the Minnesota Timbers, we look at NBA schedules and stuff and we dissect stuff, right? When the Rudy Gobert trade happened for Anthony Edwards, we're talking a month or two into the season. Anthony Edwards got caught on Instagram like in a post that was talking about it being the worst trade in the history of ball. He went into post game interviews saying like, hey, I can't be myself because the pain is clogged, which yeah, you know what I'm saying? There's a double S or Rudy Gobert. You saw it last season. The Minnesota Timbers were from a team that were okay defensively to one of the top eight defensive basketball if you adjust for getting rid of garbage time. But their offense took a stab in the back and that can be the Rudy Gobert experience. We're gonna be really good defensively, but we might be really bad offensively. But it hasn't always been the case, right? The Utah Jazz had one season where they peaked as the number one offense of all of basketball, Rudy Gobert are being the center. So there is a world where their offense could be a lot better, but last season was not that. One thing that those Utah Jazz teams had was the right amount of spacing so that Rudy Gobert can be effective, right? Rudy Gobert led the league in screen assist, which is a stat that people care about, I guess. And he also led the league in dunks like a hundred different times. Like that's all the brother did was dunk the ball, dunk the ball, dunk the ball. Both of those things took a drop, especially in the first half of the season when D'Angelo Russell was there. Now you saw it go up a little bit when Mike Connelly ended up in town because Mike Connelly and Rudy Gobert had a connection from their previous stop. And at one point a couple of years ago, they were one of the better pick and roll duos in all the basketball. And I haven't dug into the elite numbers about the second half of the season when they started back playing together. But let's just go out on the limb and say, it was probably better with those who was pick and roll versus D'Angelo Russell and Rudy Gobert. Anyway, I believe Anthony Edwards is gonna be a stud. The next thing that makes me excited about them is Carl Anthony Towns. Now, again, this experiment between the two bigs did not look pretty. The first month and a half of the season, it was awful. They ended up losing some really bad games to the Spurs on back to back. You lost to the Spurs twice in one week, bro. That's hard to do last year. That team was trying to get Victor with me. Yeah, man, they were successful, but they were bad on purpose. And you lost two different games to them. And then eventually you saw Carl Anthony Towns get injured and the injury ended up being, I don't wanna say better than anticipated because he did have a setback. But when I was watching that game live, it looked like he snapped his Achilles. Like he even did the whole thing that Kobe and Boogie both did when they hurt their Achilles with like they kinda look back because they thought somebody stepped on their leg. He did that. And I'm like, oh, that Achilles is out there. But it wasn't Achilles. But if you look at the numbers with the two centers together, it's dreadful. The defense, elite. Because you think about the Minnesota Simbots. They have a bunch of really solid defenders. Jada McDaniels, who we will talk about briefly in a couple of seconds. Anthony Edwards, again, can defend pretty well. Mike Holley, post trade that line, positive defender. And of course, Rudy Gobiar in the center position. Their defense is really good. But the offense with those two together was an ugly sight. And the numbers say it as well. It was bad. Like really, really bad. Now, I think a big part of that is because there is a lack of familiarity between Rudy Gobiar, Anthony Edwards, and Carl Anthony Towns. And you gotta think about the type of player Carl Anthony Towns has been in his career where he's been a legitimately three-level scorer and he has been one of the best offensive bigs that we've seen in a minute. Well, in the top tier, let's not say that. Because Nicolioca's exist. But he's been a top tier offensive talent for a while now. As far as putting the ball in the basket and now you add Rudy Gobiar, he's not really three levels anymore because the paint is clogged up similar to what Anthony Edwards had mentioned at the beginning of the season. So now he had to try to adjust his game to be more second level and third level. And though we know he's one of the best shooting centers of all time, that's not where all of his buckets came from. But last season it felt like majority of them had to come that way. Again, only when those two were together because when you split those two apart, you saw a lot of really good lineups, whether it be Carthony Towns at the five or Rudy Gobiar at the five and having Rudy Gobiar and Cal Anderson, even though they hated each other the last game of the season. When those two players went to court together with no Carthony Towns, the team was great, offensively and defensively. When you look at lineups at Carthony Towns and Jada McDaniels as the four, those lineups looked really good, offensively and defensively. But you have a lot of money tied up into the center position. So you need to try to figure out a way to have Carthony Towns and Rudy Gobiar flourished together. And I think part of that is just with continuity. I cannot express how important continuity can be in this league. It's rare that a team make this much of an adjustment and they look amazing the first year. Now, of course it can happen. It has happened. But it's a rare occasion unless we're talking about some of the greatest players of all time. And as of right now in Carthony Towns, Rudy Gobiar and Anthony Edwards don't fit into that list yet. You see Anthony Edwards? I'm saying yeah. So I just trust with having a full year under their belt that things are gonna be better. They also have a ton of players playing international ball right now between Anthony Edwards at USA, the DR having Carthony Towns, France having Rudy Gobiar. Who am I forgetting about to be? Nikio Alexander Walker is playing for Canada. And I feel like there's one more player that I'm just forgetting about. Oh, Carl Anderson is playing for, I wanna say China? Now this is where we get extremely nerdy because there are some things that like 95% of NBA fans don't care about. Last week, the regular season schedule was announced. And some people just used it as times to watch the cool videos that all 30 teams end up dropping to announce their schedule. And some people like me, look into their schedules and try to figure out who has the best advantage due to the schedule. Now everybody knows that you play against the same team X amount of times. There's no advantage there. But the advantage has to do with travel. The advantage has to do with back to backs. The advantage has to do with three games of four nights. Which team benefited the most? The Minnesota Timberwolves are one of the top teams up there. Yeah. And again, maybe stretching a little bit. I might be stretching a little bit. But they benefited a ton. So this comes from Jack Borman. Link will be in the description to the original tweet. The Timberwolves have been given a gift with their schedule in terms of rest advantage. They have 44 of their games with equal rest to their opponent. They have 23 games with the rest advantage and only 13 games with a disadvantage when it comes to rest. Now what does that mean? Over half of the games this season, the team that they're going against is on the exact same rest schedule. Which is cool. That means it's a one-to-one battle of talent slash X's and O's and all of that stuff. But the contrary to that is they have more games at advantages where they have fresh legs but their opponent is on the second day of a back-to-back. And those are games that we typically see the more rest of team win especially earlier in the regular season. They also start off their schedule with a bunch of home games. Now they also did the same thing last year. And again, I mentioned that they were not very good in that. But continuity! Continuity, ladies and gentlemen. Carly Townsman's 50 plus games last year and he's looking great right now in the DR. I think that they're gonna start off their season a lot better than they did last year. And then we got Jada McDaniels. There's rumors that he is now sitting at 6'11 this season. Rumored. I guess what we'll see officially once we get to training camp and stuff. But a 6'11 wing that was personally on my all defensive ballot. He didn't make it, but he should have been there in my personal opinion where he is a hound on the defensive side of the ball whether it be one-on-one defense in the passing lane. He does a little bit of everything and we've seen over the first three years of his career his offensive game has got better and better and better. And last year he ended the season as a 40% three-point shooter. Is that gonna be sustainable this season? The Timber was definitely hoped so. The Timber was definitely hoped so. But he provided so much value to this team defensively that I think can't get overlooked. So you add really solid point guard play, one of the best defensive bigs in all of the basketball, the elite offensive talents of Carl Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards and the defensive Jada McDaniels. That makes me excited. The one thing that is holding me back is that last year when it got down to the clutch, when it got down to the nitty gritty this offense stinked. And this was also the case before the Rudy Gobert trade where one of the biggest knocks on that young Timberwolves team was like, man, they blew, they blow in a lot of games. And we saw it in the playoffs, 15, 20 point leads just gone like that. And that carried over to the Rudy Gobert era as well. And hopefully with the maturity of Anthony Edwards going up and we see him taking over some games at Feebleball that that will happen a lot less, that's a lot less often and it accounts for a little bit more wins. Did I say anything to make you convinced that the wolves should be better? Here's my closing argument, Anthony Edwards. That should do it, yep, that should do it, that should do it, okay. Yeah, Minnesota Timberwolves fans, I want to come to Minnesota, come to the Target Center to watch the game. But that's only if y'all live up to y'all part of the bargain by making me look good with this video.