Souhan: Timberwolves leader Tim Connelly serves as salve for the pain of Minnesota’s deal-making history

In 1989, Jimmy Johnson personally informed my Dallas Morning News colleague Tim Cowlishaw and me of the details of the Herschel Walker trade, which, for about 24 hours, was viewed as Vikings General Manager Mike Lynn taking advantage of a rookie head coach.

From 1990-91, I covered the Vikings as a winning organization collapsed under the weight of the Walker deal, which cost Lynn, if I remember correctly, 476 players and 3,000 draft picks.

For decades, Minnesota sports fans have cited the Walker deal as the epitome of Minnesota sports incompetence.

Now, you can all get over it, because there is a sports executive in town who has perfected the reverse-Herschel.

He has traded a slew of players and picks for a hulking athlete who, unlike Walker, performed the way he was supposed to.

He has traded a player for which his organization had no use, as was the case with the Cowboys and Walker, for players who have elevated the franchise.

He has traded a quality player for a slew of assets.

He has, like Johnson in 1989, dealt with criticism of his deals that morphs into realization that we are watching something close to sporting genius.

One of the primary reasons the long woebegone Timberwolves have gone to the Western Conference finals more times in the past two years than they did in their first 34 is that President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly is equally masterful and fearless.

He has made three big deals. Here’s the spreadsheet:

Outgoing: Patrick Beverley, Walker Kessler, Jarred Vanderbilt, Leandro Bolmaro, Malik Beasley, D’Angelo Russell, Karl-Anthony Towns, four first-round picks and a second-round pick.

Incoming: Rudy Gobert, Mike Conley, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop, a first-round pick, three second-round picks and financial flexibility that would not have existed with Towns on the roster.

He has traded one player you would want on your team, Towns, and landed five winning players.

Connelly looked at a team that seemed to be on the rise, that had made the playoffs for just the second time in 15 years, and decided not to stand pat and blame the players and coaching staff if they faltered.

Coach Chris Finch plays one of the best eight-man rotations in the NBA. Five of those players arrived via Connelly trades over the past three years. Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid are rotation players who preceded Connelly’s arrival, and all have exceeded realistic expectations to date.

The Vikings of 1989-91 weren’t going to win a Super Bowl with or without Walker.

The Timberwolves of today have a chance to win a title largely because of Connelly.

When he traded for Gobert, he went against the grain in a league that had prioritized three-point shooting and athletic wings. He also recognized that many of the players Wolves fans had fallen for — such as Beverley, Vanderbilt and Beasley — were either not good enough (Beverley and Vanderbilt) or poor fits (Beasley, who aimed a gun at a family outside his house, where a large stash of marijuana and other guns were seized by police).

When he traded Russell in a three-way deal with the Lakers and Jazz, he recognized that Russell’s refined skills and name recognition would be nowhere near as valuable as a seemingly past-his-prime point guard (Conley) and a career-long reserve (Alexander-Walker.) And he removed Russell’s arrogance and bad attitude about playing with Gobert.

When he shocked Wolves fans and the NBA by trading Towns for two theoretically lesser players, Randle and DiVincenzo, he cleared cap space for maneuverability and recouped a first-round pick. Towns has helped the Knicks to the Eastern Conference finals. Randle was the Wolves’ best player as they defeated Golden State to reach the Western Conference finals.

Gobert says Connelly combines blunt truth-telling — “He’ll tell you right to your face that he’ll trade your [person] tomorrow” — with personability. Finch praised Connelly’s boldness, and his willingness to “trust” the coaching staff to “figure out” how to adapt to reshaped rosters.

Connelly is also known to enjoy a beer, so the next time you see him at a local joint, you might want to raise your glass in his direction.