Minnesota made a huge trade right before the start of last season as they sent Karl-Anthony Towns for the Knicks in exchange for Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and a 2025 draft pick. The immediate results of this trade weren’t great as Minnesota stopped being the best defensive team in the league as they had been the previous season while offensively, Randle’s style didn’t mesh well with the rest of the team’s. Thanks to that, Minnesota was a mere 0.500 team in the first two months of the regular season, as they had a 22-21 record by January 20.
However, from that moment, the Wolves had a big turnaround as they went 27-12 the rest of the regular season, good enough for the #4 best record in the league only behind OKC, BOS and CLE. During this span, Minnesota was #5 best on offense and #6 on defense.
Julius Randle was a big factor for that huge improvement. He finished the second half of the season shooting 52.3% FG and 39.8% 3pts and he was even more impressive during the playoffs by averaging 21.7 points per game and 50.2% FG. The Wolves eliminated the Lakers and the Warriors both in 5 games before crumbling against the Thunder.
For this season, Minnesota decided to maintain their main core of players. They only lost Nickeil Alexander-Walker in free agency and they think they can replace him internally with some of their young players.
No matter how much criticism he has received during his career, Rudy Gobert has always made sure that his teams are elite on the defensive end. That won’t change this season with the core of players the Wolves have. So, the X factor of this team this season will be on the offensive end: can the Wolves also be elite on offense? The signs are positive as Randle seems to have found a way to fit well in the team late last season.
Minnesota’s numbers with Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle together on court weren’t impressive last season, but now with more reps on their backs, they should improve. Also let’s not forget that Edwards is still only 24 years old and he is yet to enter his prime.
The Wolves are coming from back to back appearances in the Western Conference finals and anything worse than that would be a disappointment for them this season. However, with OKC emerging into being such an elite team, going further than that also seems to be a very hard task for the Wolves to achieve this season.