It’s worth enjoying, this season that’s brewing here. Sometimes that’s all that matters. It’s easy to forget being a fan is supposed to be about enjoying every twist, turn, peak and valley. As Minnesota Timberwolves fans, we’ve become accustomed to the drearier days reigning supreme and how enjoyment can be sucked from a season a lightspeeds, but now those clouds are starting to part and those skies are starting to brighten. It feels like the perfect time to enjoy it again.
Perhaps it’s the process of creeping up on, matching, and then obliterating expectations that does it for you. This is the same Wolves that were mired in yet another knee-deep sludge just over a year ago when Ryan Saunders was leading a MASH unit into that familiar dark abyss. It’s the same one that the ever-reliable folks over at ESPN pegged as the 13th best team in the Western Conference and the same one that Bleacher Report gave a 15 percent probability of making the playoffs. And yes, it’s the very same Wolves whose odds of success would likely have dropped in the national media’s eyes after the fired former President of Basketball Operations Gersson Rosas less than two weeks before preseason.
Let them doubt and let them use history as a crutch for their lazy analysis. We’ll enjoy that, too. We deserve to find some receipts and rub some noses where they don’t want to be rubbed.
With 12 games to go in the regular season, the Timberwolves sit in the seventh seed with 40 wins and 30 losses. They are near-certainties to clinch a top-eight seed. You know this already, but it’s worth just letting it simmer and bubble on your mind for a second. Let it creep its way into your heart and nestle itself in there. They aren’t championship contenders, and if you subscribe to the theory that only joy and celebration can be derived from being in that elite echelon then maybe it’s harder to revel, but let yourself enjoy this rarified air.
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