What to expect when you’re expecting a new Timberwolves season.

Welcome to a fascinating season of Minnesota Timberwolves basketball. 

The former laughingstock franchise of the NBA has become appointment viewing and one of the league’s daredevil darlings in their fifth season under showrunner Tim Connelly and director Chris Finch, who predates Connelly’s tenure by 15 months. It’s been an audacious ride. 

Less than 30 seconds after Connelly was introduced as the Wolves president of basketball operations in May of 2022, he proclaimed that “this place has an unbelievably special core. I’m here not to mess it up.” Forty-four days later he traded three of the top seven players in the Wolves rotation plus five first-round draft picks, all to acquire center Rudy Gobert, who played the same position as the team’s resident star, Karl-Anthony Towns, who had the longest service time of anyone on the roster. 

It was the heyday of space-and-pace basketball, with ...