I agree with that. Rubio just doesn't fit the team now that they have Butler. Although three point shooting is a huge issue. Rubio doesn't really solve that though lol.

I don't think it's just you, lots of people love this offseason.

The rebuild after 2 years is possible but only if one of Wiggins, Towns or Butler is gone. Just those 3 guys' maxes/cap holds are 85% of the cap (assuming Towns qualifies for the Rose Rule). I won't be happy if this all turns out that we rebuild from a worse position in 2019 in exchange for 2 years of being the 6 seed or something. But other people see it differently and that's okay.

Yeah, no more off ball Rubio should help. It'll especially help Wiggins' assist numbers as the defense always forced him to pass to Rubio whenever he P&R'ed. But man, Taj is so terrible for spacing. He's about 10 percentage points worse than Gorgui from midrange. He's like a 36% shooter outside of 3 feet.

What is the alternative though?

Having a core of Butler / KAT / Wiggins is fantastic regardless of how much cap space it eats up, I don't think you disagree with that.

So the question is how do you fill out the rest of the roster, right? I could be missing something but I think our options are:

Fill out roster with rookies and bums. 90% of the time continue to suck and lose, 10% of the time get lucky and have a good team.

Fill out the roster with decent veterans, make playoffs and teach KAT/Wiggins how to win, give them playoff experience 100% of the time.

Enter 2018-19 season with same decisions we were faced with this offseason, except our young stars are ready to actually win a title both due to their talent and (hopefully) the lack of competition in the west.

I guess I just don't see how we are rebuilding from a worse position three years from now. If Rubio were a rookie or we had to give up a top 3 draft pick or future picks to make this team happen, I would totally agree with you but it seems to me like we will be in roughly the same place three years from now and arguably a better place once we are closer to the Dieng contract being off the books.

I guess it makes sense if you think of Butler as a pure rental and believe Dunn/Lavine are potential stars we could've had on roster for cheap. But I think you liked that trade didn't you?

Also one other thing I've been thinking about -

The NBA landscape can change pretty quickly and the idea of waiting for strong teams to become weak is overblown, in my view. It certainly makes sense but I won't fault a semi-competitive team for making a push to become super-competitive despite not being the odds on favorite to win it all.

A couple years ago most of us would've agreed we can fast forward to 2020 because the Heat were gonna ship it every year. How's that working out

All it takes is one disgruntled player or one injury or retirement and things can change pretty dramatically.

We'll have to see what they do with Dieng, Aldrich or Bjelica. There's just no way we're going into the season with 6 bigs like we currently have.

I agree, it seems like after a year they decided that Wiggins and Towns are their centerpieces and they're going to try to build teams around them...one now when they're cheap and then one again in 3 years when all of these salaries come off the books. So we get Butler now and if in 3 years he walks or whatever, we've hopefully shown enough to free agents that this team is looking to win and they have the pieces to contend etc to get what we need to rebuild. I think it makes a lot of sense, but obviously I would have preferred to keep Rubio.

I like this take.

Aldrich couldn't crack the rotation when we were a 31 win team. Bjelly is injured now and pretty much always. And there's no way we were going to count on Patton for serious minutes.

But we totally agree that we need to move some other pieces. If we don't, I'll feel like you do.

Well, it's not that Taj doesn't help. It's just that it was 80% of our cap space on by far the least pressing position on the roster. And also he's on the downswing and old and can't space the floor at all.

I'm pretty on board with Teague over Rubio (even tho i have the sads).

I assume Aldridge will be traded for a pick or a guard at this pt

FOR a pick? He's got clearly negative value and everyone knows we're desperate.

Yeah, if we could just give away Aldrich that would be amazing, but more than likely we will have to give up that future first for someone to take Aldrich's contract.

For real.

Patton broke his foot. Never good for a big guy.

Silver lining i guess is that we aren't counting on him for anything.

The fact that George Hill got the exact same deal as Teague is disappointing. He would have been a much better fit imo

Well now they do u freak

This Patrick Patterson contract in hindsight makes the Taj contract look terrible.

Hill did not want to play for Thibs, so he would not have signed with us for similar money.

Teague is much more durable than Hill also. Teague averages 78 games played while Hill only averages 63 games played per year using the past 5 seasons.

We offered our Room Exception to Nick Young but he got the full mid-level from the Warriors and signed there. It's been so long since we've had the Timberwolves Capped Out Experience that i forgot what it was like.

good point. That might be the best thing about Teague - his durability.


bullet dodged imo

I actually think Gibson is better than Patterson, just not twice as good or whatever the salary diff is

Gibson much better fit next to towns too imo

Taj is probably still a better player, but he's not 4+x better, which is why the Pat Pat non signing hits so hard.

Taj is going to be a tough fit with Gorgui, probably fine with Towns. I liked the Taj signing and still do, but it seems like poor due diligence that we didn't at least check to see if there was interest there. Maybe Patterson never wanted to come here, but even for 8 mill per I'd still take him over Taj at 14...especially considering we're basically capped out and that extra 6 could have gone towards a useful wing.

edit: this is the perfect example of Thibs getting the band back together instead of looking for best value.

Took you 3 days to come 'round :-)

Lol. Yeah :/ .

it's not that I dislike the Taj signing, I think it makes a lot of sense if we can move the other bigs. our bench bigs were atrocious last year so that was a definite need...plus having a guy that can help the bigs in thibs system is valuable.

I just don't think it's THAT much more valuable than a younger big that can stretch the floor and shoot 3s at a decent clip as well as play good defense. Thibs is like that friend you have in fantasy football that is a diehard xxx fan and keeps taking all of the players on his team 3 rounds early.