Picture yourself as a 19-year-old basketball phenom. You’re drafted by a struggling franchise lacking direction but with some strong, young talent. Then everything turns around with the return of the hometown hero. Suddenly, people are talking championship for a team that has missed the playoffs for four straight years. But just as quickly, you’re gone, shipped off to a team that will wallow at the very bottom of the Western Conference for this season, and possibly more.
Now picture yourself as a 25-year-old basketball phenom. You’ve overcome obstacle after obstacle to establish yourself as one of the top 10 or 15 players in the league and one of the most unique. You’re also smack in the middle of a prime that could be squandered by a franchise with which you’ve already spent six frustrating years. And then, just like that, you’re gone, shipped off to a team that’s expected to contend for a title with you as a major piece next to the best player in a generation.
Laid out like that, it can seem so clear. Andrew Wiggins watched a potentially direct path into stability turn into a much longer and more fraught one; Kevin Love got out of a bad situation for a much better one. So how come the first guy seems so giddy while the second guy seems so morose? What it really comes down to is the fact that success, both personal and professional, rarely lies at the end of a straight line. More often, it’s the result of the struggle to balance conflicting needs.
On "Mike & Mike" last week, Love was something less than gushing when asked about how he’s connected with LeBron James, the superstar who by many accounts targeted him specifically as an important piece in Cleveland. “We're not best friends, we're not hanging out every day,” he said. “I think our relationship is also evolving."
And that’s only one instance in a season-long string of interactions that point to a frosty if functional partnership between them. There was LeBron’s cryptic tweet with advice not to “fit-out” after Love talked about doing just that in the preseason. There was Love’s endorsement of former UCLA roommate Russell Westbrook for MVP and James’ somewhat chilly response that Love is entitled to his opinion. There also have been grumbles about Love’s touches and questions about whether he’s being used to best advantage spotted up in the corners.
And of course, there is the ever-present drumbeat of rumors that Love will bolt from Cleveland after this season for a team that will make him the first option, for a team that can be his. Love’s protestations to the contrary will inevitably fall on some deaf ears, at least partly because he talked a similar game in Minnesota right up until he made it clear he would not re-sign there.
Meanwhile, the Timberwolves, after stumbling through injuries to virtually all their veterans and welcoming back franchise hero Kevin Garnett, are mired in a slog of terrible basketball. Garnett, Ricky Rubio, Gary Neal, Shabazz Muhammad, Robbie Hummel, Anthony Bennett and Justin Hamilton all have missed or are missing significant time right now. Nikola Pekovic has been shut down for the rest of the season, and the Wolves became the first NBA franchise to have a player (Mo Williams) score 50 points, win Western Conference Player of the Week, get traded and win Eastern Conference Player of the Week. Since Garnett’s return, the team’s work-in-progress feel has quickly devolved from rocky-yet-promising startup into that used car lot on the outskirts of town that’s had a sign saying “HAIR SLAON -- OP3NING SO0N” on it for three years.
And yet, in his first NBA game in his hometown of Toronto, Wiggins hit all the right notes, saying, “I love Minnesota. They treat me nice up there, so I plan to be there a very, very, very long time."
Wiggins, on the whole, has played the PR game well since arriving in Minnesota, erring on the side of circumspection but generally avoiding coming off as terse or brittle. There’s little reason to doubt that even with the big minutes and the mounting losses he’s been anything less than satisfied with his rookie season, having now nearly run the table on Rookie of the Month awards in the Western Conference and with every expectation of taking home the Rookie of the Year trophy.
No matter that the Wolves’ offense has often looked ponderous and antique in the half court, that the transition defense has been torpedoed by a combination of inexperience and a surplus of poorly-timed offensive rebounding. Fellow rookie Zach LaVine has been jammed in haphazardly at point guard with little clarity about whether the team sees him there full-time or is just trying to forge better playmaking that will make him a more flexible off-guard. Coach Flip Saunders has said he doesn’t run plays to get 3-pointers and that contested 3-pointers can lead to easy points in transition. Meanwhile, the top four teams in 3-pointers attempted per game sit at third, fourth, second and first in their respective conferences and the team with the league’s best defensive rating also takes the fourth-most 3-pointers per game. Personnel clearly plays a role in what a team can do, but it’s possible the only thing that can stand in the way of Wiggins’ meteoric development is a team that’s not built to leverage that talent in the modern game.
Add into this that Minnesota’s most successful team -- the 2003-04 iteration that made it to the Western Conference finals -- burned brightly and briefly after many years of shoehorning ill-fitting pieces around Garnett and was followed by a decade of abortive rebuilds and you could draw a couple conclusions about both Wiggins and Love.
You could decide Love is a sourpuss who will never be happy with anything. Plenty of people think this, but happy can look different on different people. Love is an intensely driven individual -- one need only look at the impressive physical transformation he’s undergone since entering the league to see that -- with an unusual but well-honed set of skills as well as shortcomings (height, leaping ability, defensive commitment). He’s long thrived on being doubted, and his years in Minnesota cultivated a desire to make the playoffs, to play basketball at the highest level when it really matters. But it’s also possible he either didn’t or couldn’t appreciate how fully actualized he was as an individual player with the Timberwolves. Even if he knew he would be subsumed into something larger in Cleveland, even if he earnestly wanted it, it doesn’t have to be all sunshine and roses.
You could also conclude that Wiggins, no matter how his game has blossomed in Minnesota, would have been better off in Cleveland alongside James. We might bristle at the way Love seems to be chafing in a reduced role with the Cavaliers and in the same breath wonder if Wiggins might not be better served in the long-term by a gentler entry into the NBA, and one that comes along with mentorship from an all-time great and a trip directly into the playoffs. As a franchise, the Wolves’ track record of developing talent, building around it and retaining it is less than stellar. Wiggins says he envisions himself in Minnesota for a long time, but that can all change in a hurry.
Love could win a championship as a cog in the LeBron James machine and come off as glum the whole time. Wiggins’ talent alone might drag the Wolves into the playoffs the next few years and he could smile the whole time, even if they only go from lottery team to a string of first-round exits. They’ll both keep saying that they want to win, to contend. But how happy they look doing it will not be the arbiter of success.
Steve McPherson writes for Rolling Stone and other publications. Follow him, @steventurous.
