Butler makes T-Wolves biggest threat to Warriors

Let's start by saying that, no, Jimmy Butler isn't Kevin Durant, and no, the Minnesota Timberwolves probably will not be better than the Golden State Warriors a year from now. They won 31 games last season. A seismic leap can happen, but not that much of one.

But no one will challenge the healthy, fully equipped Warriors next season. This team is simply too good, with too much talent and too clear an identity, to be beaten in its present form. That's where the Timberwolves come in.

That's where the post-Jimmy Butler-for-ancillary-parts-trade Timberwolves come in.

While Minnesota added Butler with the next season or two in mind, the long game is what makes the T-wolves so dangerous. It's not simply that Andrew Wiggins is 22 and Karl-Anthony Towns is 21. It's that Butler provides a stabilizing force and a clear path toward winning next season. It's that they were able to add him without sacrificing much of the salary cap space they have saved up. It's that somewhere along the line, this freezing-cold city became a place where NBA free agents might want to shack up.

The Timberwolves could go a lot of different directions this offseason. The easiest is to keep the core you have, find a reasonable cheaper value for Gorgui Dieng and fill in around the peripheral. Tom Thibodeau is very loyal to his players and, probably wouldn't mind that at all.

But Thibodeau sometimes seems to publicly forget his All Eyez on Me roots. He used to be the toughest coach, on his own players and on opposing offenses. His defenses built a championship in Boston and stabilized the important roles. The Timberwolves don't have players like that.

What they do have are two of the most exciting young players in the NBA in Towns and Wiggins and a crazy amount of salary cap space. Neither of the two young stars has hit free agency, while Butler's contract was signed before the salary cap spike.

Whether that money gets used to find a power forward or upgrade on Ricky Rubio at point guard is up to Thibodeau. He's the team president, and it's on him to make the right decisions (Taj Gibson? George Hill? Jrue Holiday? James Johnson?) and avoid the wrong ones (Derrick Rose). He'll have to do it all while dancing around the future possibilities of a massive luxury tax bill that owner Glen Taylor certainly won't want to see.

He's also the head coach. That means it's up to him to bring back the defensive philosophies that built elite teams in Chicago and Boston and apply them to his new stars. Wiggins and Towns have amazing defensive potential, and there shouldn't be a better coach to instruct them on that end than Thibodeau. That didn't work out in their first year together; Wiggins was perhaps even worse than in the past, while Towns showed little defensive improvement even as his offense game was unleashed.

But Butler is one of the best talents in this league, an exceedingly efficient wing scorer who can run the offense when needed. He should serve as a mentor to Wiggins, who remains a tremendous if unmoored talent, and he should be worth at least 10 wins alongside the expected improvements of the young core.

And Towns is a generational player. And Rubio is an elite passer, Dieng is a positive on both ends, Shabazz Muhammad can fill it up off the bench, Tyus Jones shows good decision-making. This is a really, really good group of players.

They need one more big move. Maybe it requires sending away Rubio or Dieng for the cap space. But it needs to be the right move. Because we need this. The NBA needs this. Even the Warriors need it.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are a true threat with a clear expiration date. The Timberwolves could outlive even the super team by the Bay. And they might even be able to knock off the Warriors before Golden State breaks up.