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The Timberwolves fell to the Spurs in the Western Conference Semifinals.<\/p>\n
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 The message to the Minnesota Timberwolves from the championship tier of the NBA has been delivered clearly and forcefully with their elimination from the playoffs three straight times: You\u2019re not there yet.<\/p>\n
Nobody was listening more carefully than Tim Connelly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of confidence in our guys, but it would be disingenuous to sit in front of this group and say we\u2019re happy with the sixth seed, we\u2019re happy with not being a home-court playoff team, we\u2019re happy that our last three closeout games have been lopsided,\u201d the Timberwolves president of basketball operations said. \u201cWe have to be realistic about what we have, which is way more good than bad, but we know that we\u2019re not good enough right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The San Antonio Spurs ousted the Timberwolves last week, taking the second-round series with a 30-point win. Last year, the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Timberwolves in five games in the Western Conference Finals on the way to the NBA title, finishing that series with a 30-point victory. The Timberwolves were beaten in five games in the 2024 Western Conference Finals, too, by the Dallas Mavericks when they still had Luka Doncic. They lost the clinching game that year by 21 points.<\/p>\n
Now the Spurs and Thunder have begun what could be a conference final for the ages, two young teams with mental toughness, defensive acumen and a superstar player. So how can the Timberwolves catch up to that? Some of the improvement effort will come from within, be it expanding roles for young players or new responsibilities for established starters. And some of the actions toward trying to keep up with the Western Conference powers will come from the outside.<\/p>\n
The Timberwolves have the 28th overall pick in the first round and the 59th overall pick in the second round in this year\u2019s draft, assets that won\u2019t move the needle much in trade talks, so they\u2019ll likely have to give up a key player or two to get one. The other disadvantage they have in building the roster for next season is the Achilles tendon injury to starting guard Donte DiVincenzo that will keep him out indefinitely in the final year of his current contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonte is one of the most competitive guys in the league. We\u2019ve got to certainly find some more shooting in his absence,\u201d Connelly said. \u201cWe think he\u2019s going to be back. We don\u2019t know when.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of the offseason roster speculation will center around the status of power forward Julius Randle, who had a dismal performance over the final five games of the playoffs. His combined plus-minus rating over the four losses to the Spurs was a minus-93, but Connelly sidestepped questions about whether Randle still fits into the team\u2019s long-term plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t win because of one player, lose because of one player. I think when we lost in the fashion we lost to San Antonio, they were clearly the better team, and we have to look at the collective, me included, the whole building,\u201d Connelly said. \u201cWhat can we all do better to ensure that we don\u2019t see the same result next season?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Timberwolves fell to the Spurs in the Western Conference Semifinals. MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 The message to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99,283174],"class_list":["post-657094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-timberwolves-offseason"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}