Donte DiVincenzo said he found his game again when he let go of the past.
DiVincenzo was talking to Dennis Schröder after the Brooklyn Nets had traded Schröder to the Golden State Warriors on Dec. 15. Incidentally, that was four days before the Wolves played the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. DiVincenzo’s career took off with the Warriors before he signed with the Knicks, and he raved about Golden State’s culture while offering advice to help Schröder acclimate to his new surroundings.
During their conversation, Schröder told DiVincenzo to stop focusing on his transition from New York to Minnesota. He had to stop thinking about the Knicks suddenly trading him days before camp in October and go out and play his game.
“[Schröder] was just straightforward with his words,” DiVincenzo told The Athletic. “He said that it’s hard. You just have to go out and do it. No matter where you’re at, just be you and just go do it. You look yourself in the mirror and be like, all right, the situation is the situation. Let last year go. This year is this year.”
From Minnesota’s opener in L.A. on Oct. 22 to their Dec. 15 game in San Antonio, DiVincenzo averaged 8.3 points, shooting 35.3% from the field and 31.9% from three. From Minnesota’s Dec. 19 game in New York to their Jan. 15 game when he injured his toe against Golden State, DiVincenzo averaged 15.5 points, shooting 45% from the field and 43.7% from three.
DiVincenzo succeeded because he let go of the past. The Wolves must do the same.
The Timberwolves have said all the right things. They’ve moved on after trading Karl-Anthony Towns. Last year, they only made it halfway through the playoffs after losing to the Dallas Mavericks in five games. Minnesota has a new roster this year and some exciting young players.
On draft night, the Timberwolves traded up to take Rob Dillingham eighth overall. Finch and Rob have talked about Dillingham’s unique situation. Few lottery picks join winning teams, let alone one that was in the Western Conference Finals last year. “It’s important to kind of set it all in context,” said Finch. “It’s hard for rookies to play meaningful minutes for teams that are trying to win at the top of the table.”
The Wolves couldn’t immediately let Dillingham learn on the job as they did with Edwards. Minnesota played Edwards 32 minutes a night, even though he had a 46.6% true-shooting percentage before the All-Star Break and 56.7% after. Dillingham had to earn minutes behind Mike Conley and DiVincenzo when Finch moved DiVincenzo into the starting lineup.
Still, Tim Connelly acted aggressively at the trade deadline, knowing that the Wolves couldn’t rely on Conley, 37, forever. As Father Time catches up with Conley, the Timberwolves must transition to Dillingham. However, to do so, they must acknowledge that they’re no longer a contender. They’re a .500 team fighting to avoid the play-in game or missing the playoffs altogether.
Last year, in the waning days of the regular season, the Minnesota Timberwolves jockeyed with the Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets for the first seed in the Western Conference. Oklahoma City and Denver finished with 57 wins, and the Thunder earned the No. 1 seed with the tiebreaker. The 56-win Wolves landed the third seed and the Phoenix Suns in the first round.
Phoenix had beaten the Timberwolves 125-106 in Game 82. Still, Minnesota swept the Suns in the playoffs, setting up a showdown against the Nuggets, the team that eliminated them in the playoffs the year before. The Wolves took the first two games in Denver, lost three straight, and came back from down 20 to bury the Nuggets.
The Wolves had scaled Everest. After holding their breath through a nail-biter 5820 feet above sea level in Denver, it felt like they could exhale. They had reached their first Western Conference Finals in 20 years, and the 50-win Mavs had eliminated the West’s No. 1 seed. “It may not be the Western Conference Finals we expected,” NBC wrote in their preview last year, “but it does promise to be an interesting one.”
Minnesota’s national television matchup in Dallas last night was a little less ballyhooed.
Like the Wolves, injury-riddled Dallas has fallen from a West leader into the NBA’s middle-class morass. Minnesota entered Wednesday’s game as the 9-seed with 22 wins; the Mavs had 23 and the 7-seed. Five wins separated the 4-seeded LA Clippers (24 wins) and the 12th-seeded San Antonio Spurs (19). At 35-7, Oklahoma City is the class of the West, but the 27-win Nuggets have created a buffer between themselves and the mushy middle.
We’re over halfway into the season. The Wolves are what they are unless they make changes. Minnesota must improve internally because the second apron limits its ability to use trades to improve. They’re not going to trade Julius Randle for a floor-spacing All-Star, so they must turn to young players with upside to improve.
It starts with Dillingham. He’s an 8-volt battery in corporeal form; his game would tire out the Energizer bunny.
In 1915, Einstein posited that space and time exist along a continuum. One hundred and ten years later, Dillingham disproves Einstein’s theory of relativity in front of 20,000 people every night. Scouts studied Dillingham’s game to determine if he could be a 6’1”, 176 lbs. franchise point guard. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is observing him, trying to decipher if he’s broken the laws of quantum physics to evade opponents twice his size.
Dillingham has the speed and quickness to break defenses. While Dillingham has trouble defending larger guards, teams can cover for point guard defense. His positives outweigh the drawbacks of his game.
He’s a spark of energy for a team that lacks it.
The Wolves should also carve out minutes for Terrence Shannon Jr. and Josh Minott, 22. As a 24-year-old rookie, Shannon should be more NBA-ready than most first-year players. Minott is shooting 50.8% from the field and plays good defense.
Still, Dillingham fills the biggest need. He’s the heir apparent to Conley and has game-breaking speed. He’s the future, and Minnesota’s Western Conference Finals run is in the past. The Timberwolves can only build off last year if they let it go entirely.