The staff had a simple question for the players who helped the Minnesota Timberwolves make their deep run last year.
"Were you a Western Conference finals team, or were you a team that just happened to make the Western Conference finals?" coach Chris Finch said, recalling the preseason conversation. "And there's only one way to prove that: Go out and do it again. And that was our mission all year."
The Timberwolves filled in that blank by beating the Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors in five games in each of their first two series in these NBA playoffs , finalizing their return to the penultimate round where they lost last season to the Dallas Mavericks.
The roster from that five-game defeat underwent a surprisingly significant change, layering the challenge of new-player adjustment on top of an already difficult task of matching or bettering such a strong postseason run.
Right before training camp began, the Wolves traded franchise cornerstone Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks for Julius Randle to take his place at power forward and in the sidekick role to Anthony Edwards. They got Donte DiVincenzo in the deal for defense and shooting off the bench, too.