Timberwolves Shows Signs of Progress, but more of the same in early Season

The Timberwolves have played 11 games now in the young season, so I figured its time to figure out what they have been up to.

This young season has featured very low lows in the 7 game losing streak the team went through while star Center Karl-Anthony Towns out with a wrist injury he suffered in the team's second win of the year in Utah. 

For the sake of my sanity lets start with the 3 games that the Wolves have won this year. In the first 2 games the Wolves won by 5 points or more. That is a decent start considering that they would only get that close again in their losses when they played the Spurs at Target Center. 
In the opening night win over the Pistons, the Wolves actually were trailing for most of the game. Many bright spots on the team though, they weren't trailing by 20 or 30 but just going back and forth between 5-3 points so they were keeping up. Then in the final minutes of the game the Wolves did something they rarely did last season, they played solid defense and pulled themselves in front of Detroit and rode it out to win! This surely shocked me to my core and put excitement in the hearts of Wolves fans everywhere since we didn't see any of this last year! 
The next game rolled around in Utah and the Wolves won again! This time much more convincingly then the last time since they won by 9 and kept a lead by as much as 20 points at one point. They held off a late rally by the Jazz to secure the win. Another game that threw excitement my way since I don't recall the Wolves playing like this last year! Unfortunately in this game, Towns went down on his left wrist and sprained it. Some had said he may be out for 3 weeks to give it time to heal.
After the injury, the Wolves couldn't find the win column until January 10th at home against the Spurs. In that time frame, mainly Beasley and Russell took over the scoring. Its unfortunate and concerning that the Wolves kept losing all those games in that time, especially if management is looking to keep Towns here long term. 
While I do think the team has made progress, it only seems to appear when Towns is on the floor or available off the bench. This may lead some to believe that perhaps its just that Towns is starting to come into his own as the star player on the team. I don't know if its necessarily that but more that the team doesn't seem to know how to play without their star. Which this is bizarre given that Russell is a star in his own right, with No. 1 overall pick Anthony Edwards showing signs of a bright future as well. In my mind, for the Wolves to truly want to turn the corner and become a periennial playoff team they need to learn how to win without Towns on the floor or when he has a bad night.

When Towns returned the team appeared to play with a different fight then before. The team has been 1-2 since he returned on January 9th. In those games Towns has led the team in rebounding twice but has never led the team in scoring. Something worth noting in the games in which the Wolves had Towns on the floor or available, the team defensively has only allowed 120+ points once in the overtime loss to the Spurs in Towns' return. Another positive stat is that with the Wolves' win over San Antonio on Jan. 10 the Wolves have now won 17 straight when holding a team under 90 points. Now obviously they cannot depend on this as a team as that mainly happens when some good defense and luck combine. 
Their most recent game was a loss to Memphis, and I sure hope they can find that extra gear in the 4th quarter like they did in the first two games. Cause that was the difference on Wednesday night, they lost it in the 4th quarter. They were actually leading for most of the game up to that point.

Some ups and downs. Some bright spots. Still a very bright future for this team, if they can realize this potential.

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