Minnesota Timberwolves: Perspecive On Disappointment

I had a fan of the Minnesota Timberwolves come up to me Wednesday and said they were disappointed in how the season has transpired so far. I wouldn’t agree; I would most certainly talk about all that the young players have shown and that it may be a sign that “competitive purgatory” may be a thing of the past.

But for right now, just looking at raw numbers—and a certain loss to a winless team; it would be fair.

True disappointment, though, is a different animal altogether. It’s the kind that burrows a hole into your stomach and makes a home there. You’re powerless against the stuff. The current Wolves state doesn’t do that.

I told the fan to get a little perspective.

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I told him that two days earlier I received an email from the website where I’ve played super high stakes fantasy football for many years. The message stated that the owner had spent too much money on new software and would be unable to pay the prizes for all of his leagues. He was sorry. He hoped everyone could forgive him.

That was easy to do in theory, or if we happened to be out of the money, but, of course, it was shaping up to be the most banner of banner years. It was first in three leagues and third in another.

Given the buy-in price, those prizes that the commish spent, rather haphazardly (how he didn’t put that money aside I don’t know, both his commission and the prizes are fixed), were going to make for a glorious holiday season.

Now it won’t be such a joyous occasion. After reading the message I was in a daze for the rest of the night. I was asking questions to people that weren’t even there. I held onto hope that the commish would find a windfall somehow and we would all get paid.

It was as delusional as thinking the 76ers would ride a heater all the way to the playoffs.

The next day, though, still reeling in a disappointment that I hadn’t felt in a long time, I thought about disappointment in the context of sports. Being from Minnesota, I don’t know it well, at least as far as being let down from huge expectations, save for a terrible Brett Favre pick throwing across his body in the NFC Championship.

Then I ran into that guy. It got me thinking about real disappointment with this Wolves team and what it would take after this season. But the more I thought about it the harder it was to come up with specific things I would have to see this season to label it a big disappointment.

As I told the guy: It isn’t set in stone by any means, but I think we have seen enough from Andrew Wiggins to see that he isn’t going to be a bust. He’s not LeBron, but he’s going to be very good. He will end up being a better player than the overrated and serial stat-stuffing Kevin Love.

And Zach LaVine? I didn’t expect much from him this season and while he has had to play heavy minutes out of necessity, he has shown me a ton of potential while having more polish than I could have expected. Throw in efficient scoring machine Shabazz Muhammad (wow) and I wasn’t sure how that guy could have been disappointed.

There was some subsequent banter on record and some bad losses. That could not be argued, but I continued on a consistent narrative about expectation and seeing great signs from the players who will decide whether this Wolves team becomes something big or not.

If one of those pillars looked lost or just didn’t have it, that would be different.  That would be franchise altering, crushing.  It isn’t that.

I’m banking on yes, it will be something big; he conceded that he was as well, but still didn’t like the record. Again, that was fair, but he felt a little bad about using the word “disappointment” given that fantasy fraud fiasco. Him not making the playoffs in a $25 league didn’t elicit any reciprocal sympathy in me, though.