Kevin Love had an injury-riddled 2012-2013 season. Sadly, it halted the Minnesota Timberwolves in the middle of a startling post-KG rise. If he hadn’t been injured, what would’ve happened?
The Minnesota Timberwolves have a long and storied history of not making it into playoff contention, especially ever since they traded away their star forward Kevin Garnett to the Boston Celtics.
Love’s tenure with the Timberwolves was ideal at the beginning, and it grew rocky towards the end of the stretch, but the in-between years were some of the best of Love’s career.
The two seasons where he was statistically the best were the 2011-12 season and the 2013-14 season. But what happened in between, during the 2012-13 season?
Well, he was injured.
During the 2012-13 season, Love was out for three different stretches with injuries. Before the beginning of the season, he fractured his hand during a team workout while doing knuckle pushups. Then, in February after playing just 18 games back, Love injured the hand again, and his season was finally put to rest when he went in for surgery on his knee which had bothered him all season.
People forget that Love was at the height of his career during this time, and Ricky Rubio looked like an NBA-ready prospect straight out of the gate. Injuries caused these two to never really play together when they were at their peak, but what would have happened if they could?
In the third installment of my “What If ” series, I take a look at what might have happened if Love hadn’t been injured, starting in the 2012-13 season.