MINNEAPOLIS — The staff had a simple question for the players who helped the Minnesota Timberwolves make their deep run last year.
''Were you a Western Conference finals team, or were you a team that just happened to make the Western Conference finals?'' coach Chris Finch said, recalling the preseason conversation. ''And there's only one way to prove that: Go out and do it again. And that was our mission all year."
The Timberwolves filled in that blank by beating the Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors in five games in each of their first two series in these NBA playoffs, finalizing their return to the penultimate round where they lost last season to the Dallas Mavericks.
The roster from that five-game defeat underwent a surprisingly significant change, layering the challenge of new-player adjustment on top of an already difficult task of matching or bettering such a strong postseason run.
Right before training camp began, the Wolves traded franchise cornerstone Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks for Julius Randle to take his place at power forward and in the sidekick role to Anthony Edwards. They got Donte DiVincenzo in the deal for defense and shooting off the bench, too.
Randle looked out of sorts at times during the first couple of months, and coinciding midseason injuries for him, DiVincenzo and Rudy Gobert further hampered progress on the court and in the standings. Losing 117-116 on Feb. 28 to a Utah team that finished last in the league left the Wolves at 32-29, staring the play-in games straight in the face with the West stacked again with more competitive teams than there were spots in the playoffs.
But the three of them got healthy again, and the Wolves took off in March.
''Having the mental toughness and determination to say we're going to figure this thing out, because all of us, as a whole, believed how good we could be as a team,'' said Randle, who had 29 points in the Game 5 win over Golden State on Wednesday night. ''I'm extremely proud of everybody.''
