This is an ode from a young sports fan, who has seen & heard a hardly comprehensible number of shocking outcomes and ridiculous scandals from each of the major sports programs in the Min-Dak. And I wasn't even alive for the lost super bowls. Heck, I barely made it into the world for the last championships. I was way too young to remember them. So negativity and skepticism are a deeply engrained trait. I'm not alone in that either.
So when the Timberwolves pull off such an overwhelmingly positive move such as they did last night, the negative possibilities need to be explored.
In the immediate future, there is the possibility that Jimmy "Bulldog" Butler doesn't coexist well with the rest of the roster. For all the defensive issues, youth and even injuries one thing that was not disputable was that the kids liked each other. Okay, I can't say that, but they seemed to like each other.
Why wouldn't they though? They were all very close in age. All highly touted coming out of high school. All played their one year of college basketball at the best of the best university. Shared life experience. There are exceptions to that sure, but KAT, Wiggins, LaVine, Jones, and Muhammed all came up the same way. What's more, the 3 pups seemed to get along especially well. So when the business of the NBA comes along and breaks up the band, how will they react to it? Will Wiggins opt to go elsewhere? Will Towns force a trade? Will their production suffer out of a potential feeling of expendability? I doubt it. And I hope not. Because they're not expendable. Hopefully they'll take it as the latest lesson on their path to becoming the future of the NBA.
But what if they don't mesh? What if Butler's different journey to stardom keeps him on a sort island from the younger guys on the team? That could be a unique kind of cancer in the locker room. Again I think that age and experience are critical. The fact that Bulldog is older and more experienced may put him in an immediately advantage position from which the team can become a more cohesive and productive unit.
Is there another way that the team and future could become darkened, even though right now things appear some promising? If there is, I can't think of it, but my fellow jaded sports fans out there may be able to give it a shout in the new comments section.
For the little that it's worth, I would put the odds of things going horribly or even partially wrong at around 5% but if history has been any indication, a 5% chance of things going wrong in MN may as well be a guarantee.
Sorry to rain on the parade but with all the sunshine and rainbows that I'm hearing from local and national pundits I felt it necessary to balance the equation just a little bit.