Minnesota Timberwolves: Breaking down Gersson Rosas’ early impact

What’s next for the Timberwolves

While Minnesota has shown glimpses of what could be right before the NBA suspended itself indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, questions and doubt still overshadow the team’s ceiling, specifically around Karl-Anthony Towns. In the time Towns has been on the floor this season, people have questioned his will to win, attitude, and effort exerted on the defensive end.

Minnesota has been amongst the worst in the league defensively this season, and some argue that it’s even worse with Towns on the floor. At the end of the day, this Minnesota team will only go as far as Towns takes them. However, the hope is that the new, young talent around him, specifically Russell, a former all-star and good friend of Towns, will bring out an improved version of the former All-NBA big man.

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Whenever the NBA season does resume and end, the Wolves will most likely finish at the bottom of the standings, but they’ll also contain one of the youngest rosters in the NBA. Aside from James Johnson and Evan Turner, only one player on the roster is over the age of 25, Jake Layman.

The Wolves have been able to find young talent, both through the draft and undrafted, who have shown capabilities to become quality players in the league, Jordan Mclaughlin and Naz Reid being examples. Second-year man Josh Okogie has looked like a different player in the second half of the season, and lottery pick Jarrett Culver was beginning to gain more traction and experience.

Additionally, through trades, the Wolves were able to stockpile recent former first-round picks like Omari Spellman and Jacob Evans who can hopefully grow in an environment that’ll be more patient with their development than their prior situations were.

Finally, with two more first-round picks in the upcoming 2020 draft, one pick specifically that has first overall potential, it is likely that more assets are on the way to improve the team’s foundation.

In a January interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune, Gersson Rosas spoke about building a sustainable model that will allow the organization to be consistently successful, and ultimately build a contending team. A lot of this season has been spent getting rid of the old, and starting fresh with the new, only Towns and Okogie remain as players who were on the team a year ago.

In hindsight, how successful this team will be under the new regime remains unclear, but what the 2019-20 Timberwolves season has shown is that the building of Rosas’s “sustainable model” is officially underway.